What was Truth? Lodovico Cigoli and Conflicting Truth Claims around 1600

Abstract

Combining a monographic with a systematic interdisciplinary approach, the dissertation ‘Lodovico Cigoli: Forms of Truth around 1600’ examines the conditions of artistic production in a period characterized by the so-called Counter-Reformation, but also by far-reaching changes in the study of nature. The Florentine artist Lodovico Cigoli is presented as a multifaceted personality engaged in heterogeneous fields of knowledge such as art, astronomy, anatomy, literature, hydrostatics, and music. Active in Florence and Rome in the time after the Council of Trent (1545–63), Cigoli is part of an artistic reform movement. As a friend of astronomers, anatomists and mathematicians he participates in what was then cutting edge research. His devotional paintings however are in many respects paradigmatic of the confessional era. His work thus negotiates the conflicting truth claims raised by theologians, historiographers, philologists, natural scientists, art theorists, commissioners, and believers. Following Martin Mulsow's concept of a ‘cultural history of truth’, the dissertation examines the criteria that had to be met by a proposition or an artwork to be considered true by different social groups at a certain point of time.