Lugar y funcionamiento de las imágenes en la retórica visual: Del Trecento italiano al Renacimiento inglés

The article discusses Quentin Skinner's contributions to the analysis of images in political rhetoric and explores a theoretical elucidation of its argumentative functioning by applying Horst Bredekamp’s theory of image acts. After reviewing the dimensions of Skinner’s rhetoric, the work focuses on examining the place that images occupy in rhetorical arguments. For this, it discusses some iconic images of the Italian Trecento and the English Renaissance such as Lorenzetti’s fresco panels “Good and Bad Government” and the frontispiece of Hobbes’ Leviathan. The article acknowledges, at minimum, three visual rhetorical figures that amplify the impact of images for persuasive purposes served effectively to construct political abstractions, and fiction, and to modify the meanings of political concepts. In visual terms, the functioning of these three discursive figures can be explained by Bredekamp’s theory of images. The article concludes that, although the linking of the rhetorical and visual concepts of both authors can be exemplified with the analysis of a section of the frontispiece of Leviathan, the viability of using this assembly as a theoretical model for the examination of other Renaissance images depends, among other considerations, on the possibility of associating them with texts, contexts and the understanding of the reception of the arguments in a specific discussion.