Images of Transparency and Resurrection from Leonardo da Vinci to Crisóstomo Martínez

Abstract

The essay aims to discuss the fortune of the well-known iconography of the “transparent body” by Leonardo da Vinci, clearly and first of all in the field of artistic anatomy. Some of the most illuminating evidence of this legacy can be found in the plates realized in Paris at the end of the 17th century by the mysterious Valencian engraver Crisóstomo Martínez. These incredible documents are strictly connected to the odd vogue of transparency that, in the same years, seems to affect also European literature, e.g. the pastoral novel Le Berger extravagant by Charles Sorel, the science fiction stories by Cyrano de Bergerac and the famous and “exemplar” tale El licenciado Vidriera by Miguel de Cervantes.