Iridescence and the Image: Material Thinking in the Early Modern Spanish World

by Brendan C. McMahon

Overview

At the turn of the seventeenth century in Spain and Mexico, people were fascinated by iridescence. In paintings, portraits, and prints, artists stretched the capacities of conventional media to depict shimmering hues. Some artists put iridescent material right into their work—such as the Indigenous artists in central and western Mexico who crafted elaborate mosaics from feathers. Meanwhile, scientists tried to convey the color play of iridescence in their writings, while theologians and intellectuals invoked iridescent materials in essays and commentaries. Writers also wove the subject into theater scripts and poems.

In Iridescence and the Image, Brendan C. McMahon explores the preoccupation with materials such as shot fabric, hummingbird feathers, mother of pearl, and opals in the early modern Spanish world. McMahon takes as his point of departure the virtuosic depictions of iridescent silk (tornasol) that Spanish artist Antonio de Pereda painted in the 1630s. He shows that iridescent materials such as tornasol and feathers served to challenge assumptions about the nature of visual perception. Ultimately, McMahon argues, iridescence provided a way for people to grapple with profound questions about seeming and being, deception, and the nature of truth.

This highly original book will be of interest to scholars of art history, history, and literature in the early modern Spanish Empire and beyond.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780271099699
Publisher:	Penn State University Press
Publication date:	10/14/2025
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 10.00(h) x 0.85(d)

About the Author

Brendan C. McMahon is Assistant Professor of History of Art at the University of Michigan.

Editorial Reviews

In this imaginative study, McMahon shows how the dazzling but fleeting visual effects of iridescent materials prompted reflection on truth and deceit in the early modern Spanish world. Readers will find themselves looking at feathers, seashells, and swaths of shot silk in new and revelatory ways.”

—Michael J. Schreffler, author of Cuzco: Incas, Spaniards, and the Making of a Colonial City

“Brendan McMahon’s elegant and entirely original book reveals the ubiquity of iridescent objects—such as shimmering silks and feathers, which appear to shift color—in early modern collections. However, McMahon shows that these materials were also everywhere in period writings, used as potent metaphors about the deceitfulness of art and the unreliability of the senses. Around the motif of iridescence, the author builds a rich and innovative interpretive framework for understanding some of the period’s most pressing concerns about what and how humans see.”

—Adam Jasienski, author of Praying to Portraits: Audience, Identity, and the Inquisition in the Early Modern Hispanic World

From the Publisher