Discovering truths by revealing "apariencias": unveiling as a staging of knowledge in Spanish Golden Age

Abstract

This article analyses two original editorial devices, which use unveiling as a staging of reading and knowledge acquisition: the frontispieces illustrated with curtains and the Navigación para el cielo, a fold-out illustrated poem, in which reading is a succession of discoveries. The first part of the article relates these objects to the spectacular pattern known as “apariencia”, and to the theatrical and ritual uses of the curtain in the worlds of drama, liturgy, royal ceremony and art collecting. The dignity and wonder of this spectacle of discovery are linked to the surprise of a revelation. The second part studies the frontispieces and the Navegación, exploring the epistemological implications associated to the instant of the unveiling, characteristic of the “apariencia”.