Fascinated by the intricate politics of the encounter between two human beings, artists such as Jacques Callot, Georges de la Tour, and others represented the human figure as a performer acting out a social role. This book draws on literature, social history, and affect theory to understand the way that figuration performed social positions.
After the heroic nudes of the Renaissance and depictions of the tortured bodies of Christian saints, early seventeenth-century French artists turned their attention to their fellow humans, to nobles and beggars seen on the streets of Paris, to courtesans standing at their windows, to vendors advertising their wares, to peasants standing before their landlords. Realism and Role-Play draws on literature, social history, and affect theory in order to understand the way that figuration performed social positions.
