Book burning and image destruction representations in the art of the Spanish Golden Age

Abstract

The activities of the Spanish Inquisition on censorship of both books and artistic images were often executed until their final consequences, such as the destruction of those works that transgressed the limits of orthodoxy. The aim of this paper is to analyze these acts of censorship promoted by the Inquisition during Spanish Golden Age through a way rarely explored to date: images, both literary and plastic where book burning and image destruction acts are depicted. Thus, the analysis of these representations will be the theme of this study. The visual concretions of inquisitorial acts of disapproval, will allow a new analysis of the phenomenon of censorship through the images born in the same cultural context. Further, this method undertakes an original approach to the issue, overcoming the classical approach based on the inquisitorial documentation, adding the contributions of the perspective of literature and the arts, to the view of censorship and punishment acts, witnessed by Spanish Golden Age writers and artists.