Painting Presence: Caravaggio and Sorolla
British Journal of Aesthetics June 2, 2026 DOI: 10.1093/aesthj/ayag013 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that analyzing how Caravaggio and Sorolla create a 'presence effect' in their paintings can illuminate the phenomenological grounds of the feeling of presence in ordinary visual perception, and proposes a conjecture about those grounds based on the painters' techniques. |
Abstract
Abstract Seeing someone contrasts both with (a) thinking about them and with (b) seeing a portrait of them, in making the person seen seem present ‘in the flesh’. A long-standing question in the philosophy of perception is what underwrites this feeling of presence in visual experience. Yet some painters excel at creating an uncanny semblance of this feeling of presence. The core of this article attempts to identify the elements in the technique of two masters of this ‘presence effect’—the baroque pioneer Caravaggio and the Spanish modernist Joaquín Sorolla—that underwrite the special feel of presence in their paintings. It then leverages the results to formulate a conjecture about the phenomenological grounds of the feeling of presence in visual perception.