Salas Barbadillo y el quehacer grotesco: «Las líneas de este pincel y los renglones de esta pluma» en El curioso y sabio Alejandro, juez y fiscal de vidas ajenas (1634)

This study analyzes the writing of El curioso y sabio Alejandro, juez y fiscal de vidas ajenas (1634), by Alonso Jerónimo de Salas Barbadillo, focusing on the use of painting in the context of his fictional prose. It will be studied how Salas visually reinforces the social situation in times of crisis through the exhibition of shocking portraits. This grotesque world is represented both in the figures/images, which constitute the fiction of the gallery-frame, and in the epitomes, whose purpose was for the reader to recreate in his memory the moral precept that the literary description transmits in order to compensate for the lack of pictures in the book