Description: "Explores how seventeenth-century Spanish painter Antonio de Pereda and his contemporaries used iridescent materials such as textiles, feathers, and shells to examine visual perception and cultural meaning. Traces transatlantic influences and reveals how these materials shaped debates on knowledge, empiricism, and belief in early modern Spain and Mexico"--
Brief description: Brendan C. McMahon is Assistant Professor of History of Art at the University of Michigan.
Review Quotes:
"In this imaginative study, McMahon shows how the dazzling but fleeting visual effects of iridescent materials prompted reflection on truth and deceit in the early modern Spanish world. Readers will find themselves looking at feathers, seashells, and swaths of shot silk in new and revelatory ways."
--Michael J. Schreffler, author of Cuzco: Incas, Spaniards, and the Making of a Colonial City