Аннотация:Quiero, pues, examinar brevemente ese natural, hablando en terminos pictoricos, que extendido en derredor nuestro, nos dice y aun nos manda que le pintemos, pidiendonos con ardorosa sugestion su retrato para recrearse en el, o abominar del artista con crftica severa. So Galdos in his speech to the Real Academia in 1897 spoke of the medio social ... como generador de la obra literaria.I Though his choice of imagery on this occasion may seem to correspond to a purely conventional defense of the mimetic impulse in the novel, the preoccupation with the visual arts as they relate to literature is actually a constant in the Galdosian oeuvre, attested to by the many critics who have studied Galdos' reliance upon techniques borrowed from painting, photography, sculpture and architecture. J. J. Alfieri, in his El arte pictorico en las novelas de Galdos, offered an initial exploration of Galdos' use of religious iconography, his recourse to the popular nineteenth-century genres of portraiture and historical painting and his evident knowledge of art and artists as incorporated into the lives of his characters.2 Peter Bly has since expanded this discussion by analyzing the manner in which the pictorial arts not only determine
