Recounts how King Philip IV of Spain, at the prompting of his prime minister, built a new palace and commissioned hundreds of paintings by the greatest artists of the time

A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV

BROWN, JONATHAN

Arts & Photography

Yale Univ Pr

Offers a detailed biography of the seventeenth century Spanish painter, looks at all of his paintings, and discusses the original technique Velazquez developed for his art

Velázquez: Painter and Courtier

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

El Greco, Ribera, Velazquez, Murillo - these were but a few of the great 16th and 17th century artists whose genius illuminated Spain's golden age of painting. In this book, Jonathan Brown surveys the development of painting in Spain during this period, focussing on the interaction between art and the prevailing socio-economic and political conditions. Brown situates the history of Spanish painting within a European context, showing that Spain was in continual contact with artistic centres in Italy and the Netherlands. He also discusses non-Spanish painters such as Titian, Rubens and Luca Giordano, who worked in Spain or whose art had been influential there. Under Brown's analysis, Spain becomes a historical model of a country that receives artistic impulses from abroad and transforms them to fit the needs of its society. This history should enlighten students, scholars, and the general reader.

The Golden Age of Painting in Spain

This book is an account of the formation of the first great Royal art collections. This new and powerful interest in acquiring pictures transformed the way in which painting was viewed within the context of European culture, and is a fascinating story of greed, intrigue and passion.

Kings and Connoisseurs: Collecting Art in Seventeenth-Century Europe

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

In 1649, following his defeat in the civil war, Charles I was executed, and his personal effects, including his great collection of works of art, were put up for sale. Over the next four years, masterpieces by Raphael, Titian, Mantegna, Veronese, and other famous artists were covertly acquired by the Spanish ambassador in London. He shipped them to Madrid, where they were divided between the collections of Philip IV and his principal minister, Luis de Haro. In this book distinguished historians and art historians trace the political and artistic relationship of Britain and Spain in the first half of the seventeenth century, culminating in this Sale of the Century.” The book includes portraits and biographies of the leading figures, contemporary representations of the major historical events, and an account of many of the masterpieces that moved from London to Madrid.

The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604-1655

Elliott, John

Great painters are invariably great technicians. In creating the techniques he needed to express his ideas, Velazquez became one of the most original practitioners of the art of painting ever known. In this richly illustrated book, two widely recognised specialists on Velazquez - one an art historian, the other a conservation scientist - combine their expertise to show exactly how Spain's most famous painter realised his artistic vision. More than two hundred photographs of details of Velazquez's paintings vividly demonstrate how the artist realised his vision of man and nature through a highly allusive, economical manner of painting.

Velazquez: The Technique of Genius

Garrido, Carmen

The Buen Retiro, a royal retreat and pleasure palace, was built for Philip IV on the outskirts of Madrid in the 1630s. With its superb display of paintings by Vel‡zquez and other contemporary artists, the palace became a showcase for the art and culture of Spain's Golden Age. A Palace for a King, first published to wide acclaim in 1980, provided a pioneering total history of the construction, decoration, and uses of a major royal palace, emphasizing the relationship of art and politics at a critical moment in European history. In this extensively revised edition, the authors review the scholarship produced on different aspects of the history of the palace and its decoration over the past quarter century. A number of new, previously unpublished illustrations have been added, and many of the plates are now reproduced in color.

A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Phillip IV (Revised and Expanded Edition)

ELLIOTT, JOHN H.

A close look at Goya’s final years and his brilliant culminating work Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) spent the last four years of his life living in Bordeaux with other political émigrés from Spain and South America. In those years he created small-scale, intimate pieces, including uncommissioned portraits of friends and family, miniature paintings on ivory plaques, and numerous drawings and lithographs. These works attest to the artist’s continuing vitality in his old age and also offer insight into his life in Bordeaux. This beautiful book presents fifty-one key works from Goya’s late period along with two essays that illuminate his works of that time. Jonathan Brown retells the story of Goya’s difficult years in exile when he nevertheless continued to make art, experimenting with the new medium of lithography, inventing a technique of miniature painting on ivory, and painting remarkable portraits of friends and supporters. Susan Grace Galassi describes the rich historical and cultural milieu of Bordeaux and establishes a biographical context and sense of place that underscore the triumph of Goya’s final achievement.

Goya's Last Works

Galassi, Susan Grace

In this stimulating book, a leading authority on the Spanish master Diego Velázquez discusses this enigmatic artist and explores the mysteries presented by his paintings.
The essays collected here, written over the course of Jonathan Brown’s distinguished career, include some which are published in English for the first time and one which has never before been published. Two themes unite them. The first concerns the changing relationship between Velázquez and his patron Philip IV, which provides a framework for Brown to interpret the painter’s career. The centerpiece of this relationship is Veláquez’s masterpiece, Las Meninas, and this painting is the subject of two essays. The second theme is the problem of attributions and the related issue of Velázquez’s innovative technique. Since Velázquez was not a prolific painter, questions of authenticity become increasingly contentious. Brown considers this matter in its widest dimensions and participates in the debate about individual attributions.

Collected Writings on Velázquez

Other Distribution

Known primarily as a great painter, Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (1617-1682) was also one of the best draftsmen of the 17th century. Although his devotional paintings seem to have been created effortlessly, they are the result of careful thought and study, a process that comes alive in the preparatory drawings. Murillo used a variety of techniques, favoring pen and ink and brown wash and red-and-black chalk. Like painters schooled in Italian Renaissance practice, the Spaniard developed his paintings in stages, starting with sketches of the full composition and then focusing on details that posed specific problems. Occasionally, Murillo used drawings as a medium for original compositions; these are highly finished pieces, usually enhanced by the use of wash and unmistakably stamped with the artist's personality. 
This sumptuous book is a thoroughly revised edition of the 1976 publication Murillo &amp; His Drawings. Twenty sheets have been added to the catalogue of authentic works, the bibliography has been brought up to date, and the entries have been revised.

Murillo: Virtuoso Draftsman

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