arte del ri-descrivere

“[...] The Dutch painter considers himself a craftsman, not an intellectual, and this rejection of learned art in the humanistic sense characterizes his sociological status and the very nature of his art throughout the seventeenth century.” With the title The Art of Re-describing, I intend to resume an inquiry into seventeenth-century Dutch painting and its profound investigation of the figuration of truth. The Art of Describing by Svetlana Alpers is indeed the work that inspired this text—hence the excerpt quoted above—and whose title I allow myself, in turn, to play with. My aim is to explore its academic applications and to restore to the field of architectural representation—characterized by its continuous redefinition in response to the evolution of its working tools—the status of a modern craftsmanship of the image.