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The Arts of Spain
Iberia and Latin America, 1450–1700
256 pages | 167 color/20 b&w illustrations | 11.3 x 9.72 | 2007
Cloth edition is not available
ISBN 978-0-271-03337-2 | paper: $47.50 sh
Co-published with the Victoria and Albert MuseumAvailable in the U.S. and Canada
“This is an excellent book. Its virtues are that it offers an overview of the painting, sculpture, architecture, and luxury arts of Iberia; furthermore, it is highly reliable. Between the footnotes and the bibliography, it contains a trustworthy list of existing publications on Spanish and Portuguese art, a list that registers the history of Iberia with depth and balanced judgment.” —Gridley McKim-Smith, CAA Reviews
“This richly illustrated volume is a masterful study of the arts of Spain and its colonies from 1450 to 1700.” —F.W. Robinson, Choice
This beautifully illustrated book opens up the great age of Spanish and Portuguese sculpture, painting, architecture, and the decorative arts. A dazzling array of arts from the Peninsula and Hispanic America of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the time of the Reconquest of Granada to the decline of the Hapsburg dynasty in Spain, is presented here.
The book also discusses Spain’s cultural relationships with the rest of Europe, particularly Britain, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and explores the ambivalent ways in which Spanish art was viewed and received. Often prejudiced ideas about Spanish Catholicism and culture led to a biased understanding of Iberian arts. This view also sometimes affected the Spaniards’ own view of their arts and traditions, as well as the way in which the art of Spain is perceived today by others. This landmark publication explores how works of art produced in Spain and Portugal relate to other European traditions through themes such as the role of the church, secular art, the heritage of Islam and Judaism, and trade and patronage.
The variety of artworks examined in context within each chapter is impressive and eclectic, ranging from paintings, sculpture, books, and engravings to tapestries, furnishings, ceramics, and architecture. Marjorie Trusted’s accessible but authoritative text, works of art from Spain, Portugal, and Hispanic America, and maps and a timeline linking Hispanic art and culture with contemporary events elsewhere make this an invaluable survey of Hispanic art during its golden age.
Marjorie Trusted FSA, a graduate of Cambridge University and the Courtauld Institute of Art, is Senior Curator of Sculpture in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s Department of Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics and Glass. She has published widely on sculpture and won the 1998 Eleanor Tufts Award for Spanish Sculpture: A Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria and Albert Museum.