This interdisciplinary volume emerges from the Collaborative Research Center Andere Ästhetik, which explores how premodern artifacts reflect on their own aesthetic status. It turns to a theme central to aesthetic thought from antiquity to the present: the tension between illusion and appearance.

At its core is the tension between radiance and shining, visibility and coming-into-appearance on the one hand, and illusion and mere appearance as deception on the other. Closely tied to light, illumination, and reflection, these notions also evoke blinding, concealment, and misdirection.

Through case studies of selected texts, monuments, and artworks from antiquity to the early modern period, contributors from multiple disciplines examine how phenomena of radiance, appearance, and illusion are staged and interpreted. The essays ask under which cultural-historical conditions aesthetic configurations are perceived as enlightening and instructive, and when they are judged to be obscuring or deceptive.

By tracing the shifting boundaries between revelation and illusion, the volume opens up diverse perspectives on the enduring ambiguity of aesthetic appearance.