This collection offers a set of new readings on the history, meanings, and cultural innovations of the grotesque as defined by various current critical
theories and practices. Since the grotesque frequently manifests itself as striking incongruities, ingenious hybrids, and creative deformities of nature
and culture, it is profoundly implicated in early modern debates on the theological, philosophical, and ethical role of images. This consideration
serves as the central focus from which the articles in the collection then move outward along different lines of conceptualization, chronology,
cultural relevance, place, and site. They cover a wide spectrum of artistic media, from prints to drawings, from sculptures to gardens, from paintings
to stuccos. As they do this, they engage with, and bring together, theoretical perspectives from writers as diverse as Plato and Paleotti, Vitruvius and
Vasari, Molanus and Montaigne. Whether travelling a short distance from Nero’s Domus Aurea to Raphael’s Vatican logge, or across the ocean from
Italy to New Spain, this volume goes further than any previous study in defining the historic understanding of grotesque and, in so doing, providing
us with a more nuanced resource for our understanding of an art form once viewed as peripheral
