La imagen del niño en el umbral de la modernidad: tres figuras infantiles en la pintura de Cosme San Martín

Abstract

The following article proposes to analyze the representation of childhood in the work of Chilean painter Cosme San Martin. San Martin’s paintings were made in the time when Chilean society was facing the changes associated with the arriving of modernity and are related to the tension between civilization and barbarianism. From the conception of the child figure as a metaphor of the young republic, it can be observed how the artist suggests the modernization of our society and how that is linked to the importance of education on the goal of becoming a refined country, a path to follow in order to go from barbarism to civilization.