Un discurso inédito de Pablo de Céspedes sobre el origen de la pintura y las primeras representaciones figurativas. Estudio y edición

Abstract

Through his contributions in different cultural fields, Pablo de Céspedes is gradually becoming seen as an original and ambitious Spanish humanist within the tradition of Spanish classicist culture in the transition from the 16th to the 17th centuries. This paper presents a previously unpublished text by the Cordoban artist and theoretician in which he explores the first artefacts with the aim of establishing the origin of the fi ne arts. He shows a wide command of classical and Hebrew sources as the two basic theoretical foundations on which the cultural models of speculative postTrentine art was based which defined imperialist Spanish humanism at the timt! when the doctrine of the CounterReformation was being fo rmulated. At the same time we can perceive the close relation between this text and other theoretical works by de Céspedes, which had a profound intluence throughout the 17th century in Spain.