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Urte Krass: Visualizing Portuguese Power
Visualizing Portuguese Power
(p. 9 – 18)

Urte Krass

Visualizing Portuguese Power
Between Imperial Agenda and Agency of the Image. An Introduction

PDF, 10 pages

  • analytics of power
  • art history
  • iconography
  • 18th century
  • theory of the image
  • Portugal
  • 17th century

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Urte Krass

Urte Krass

works as Assistant Professor at the Institute for Art History of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich. Her research focusses on saints’ images from icon to photography, early artistic theory in the Italian »novelle« of the 14th century as well as on the political use of images in Portugal and its Overseas Empire in the Early Modern period.

Other texts by Urte Krass for DIAPHANES
Urte Krass (ed.): Visualizing Portuguese Power

Images have always played a vital role in political communication and in the visualization of power structures and hierarchies. They gain even more importance in situations where non-verbal communication prevails: In the negotiation processes between two (or more) different cultures, the language of the visual is often thought of as the most effective way to acquaint (and overpower) the others with one’s own principles, beliefs, and value systems. Scores of these asymmetrical exchange situations have taken place in the Portuguese overseas empire since its gradual expansion in the 16th century.
This book offers new insights into the broad and differentiated spectrum of functions images could assume in political contexts in those areas dominated by the Portuguese in early modern times. How were objects and artifacts staged and handled to generate new layers of meaning and visualize political ideas and concepts? And what were the respective reasons, means, and effects of the visualization of Portuguese power and politics?

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