Feels a lot like "LOST fandom."

"In an age so attuned to emblematic allusions, it was only to be expected that the painting of inanimate objects should be made the vehicle of various kinds of symbolic meaning."

I'm kinda partial to the king's attendants who had to strip out of their pants and carry the king's menagerie to his boat for him.

Or Washington Irving. The guy who could write crisp titles like "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" also titled a book "Salmagundi, or The Whim-Whams & Opinions of Launcelot Langstaff, Esq. & Others."

On eBay it's almost impossible to make that book seem interesting to anyone who doesn't already know it.

At least you're now prepared!

Pretty incredible what a quality set of facsimile dustjackets does to elevate these old books.

The Baroque was a rejection of stylized perfection & exaggeration in favor of an emotionally moving & engaging realism. So it's interesting that caricature - which is exaggeration of its own - fits so well under the Baroque umbrella. But it comes down to the essence of trying to find "truth."