Un tableau vivant de Caín y Abel: Estudio de un caso de difusión del arte europeo en Chile a mediados del siglo XIX1

Abstract

This article reconstructs, from surviving posters, prints, and Italian, English, and American press articles, part of the history of the Keller Troupe, and the aspects of its tableaux vivants’ shows, of the Cain y Abel piece they presented in November 1865 in Santiago’s Municipal Theater. The choice of the pictorial and sculptural references of the living pictures, the enthusiasm and silence of the press, and the moral and artistic suspicions that aroused their sculptural poses, allow us to glimpse from a place at the same time peripheric and global, several of the knots that formed the epicenter of the discussion about the arts during the nineteenth century. They also shed light on the ways in which popular culture appropriated art history and the unconventional ways of disseminating European art in South American countries