Vicente Carducho and the Studio-Academy: Modelling Artistic Practice and Connoisseurship in Early Modern Spain
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“Vicente Carducho’s Studio-Academy: Modelling Artistic Practice and Connoisseurship in Early Modern Spain” analyzes a variety of primary sources pertaining to Vicente Carducho (c.1576-1638) in order to describe the emergence of informal art academies in early modern Spain, a subject hitherto neglected. Through an intertextual analysis of important surviving documents from this prolific court painter who worked for King Philip III and King Philip IV of Spain—such as his treatise the Diálogos de la pintura, his petitions to establish a royal art academy, and his estate documents—this dissertation argues that Carducho ran a studio-academy in his home. It explains how Carducho’s collections of art, instruments, and books would have been employed within an interdisciplinary space, where mathematical exercises, optical experiments, and the study of natural science complemented art making. Furthermore, it evaluates how these activities were part of an Aristotelian framework of knowledge formation in which sensorial perception was the key to educating artists and art aficionados. Carducho’s role as the Maestro in the studio-academy and in his treatise, the Diálogos, positioned him as an expert on art as well as on the skills and behaviors of connoisseurship, making him an invaluable resource in the artistic, scientific, and courtly circles of Spain.