Shadow as an Index of Corporeality: Revisiting Shadows in the History of Western Painting From its Origin Myths to the Renaissance

ABSTRACT

Starting from a broad understanding of the shadow as a spatial concept, this essay proposes a bibliographic review on the representations of shadow in the history of traditional Western painting, both in its technical and symbolic dimensions. Through specific images, the text comments on this theme, limiting itself to a time frame, since the founding myths of painting in the Ancient Age until the 16th century. The theoretical clash confronts a pre-established idea that the shadow representations prior to the Cinquecento happened only in an intuitive way. Thereby, it seeks to demonstrate, despite the technical limitations of medieval painting, that shadows were already used as articulating elements of meaning when offering testimony and representation of some corporeality.

KEYWORDS Art History; Painting; Shadow; Representation; Corporeality