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The efforts to measure, control and assess the environment, and society, would not have any support if they had not been internalized by the individual.
In this case, it was the misfortunes that left their mark and promoted the way we measure, and above all, measure ourselves.
In the fourteenth century, with the appearance of the Black Death, a concern arose among Europeans to find out what had gone wrong in their idyllic trust in reason. New forms of rationality appeared, focused not only on the mathematical abstract, but also on the emotional and personal aspects.
The image of Saint Magdalene (Mateo Cerezo, Burgos Museum) illustrates the effort of European culture to search within man for his self-knowledge, self-control and salvation.
Ultimately, the person
In the natural sciences, the human body appears again as a primordial subject of study. In the spiritual sciences, introspection and self-demand were the motor that was combined with the new ways of measuring and also achieving salvation. Baroque art is a culmination in the expression of these concerns.
Rhetorical resources such as the mirror or its interest in moving the viewer open the door to the symbiosis of control of society and control of the person, to the union between science and spirit, to the creation of a governable individual.