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

Professor Jonathan Brown (Author), Prof. John H. Elliott (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0300101856 | ISBN-13: 978-0300101850 | Publication Date: January 1, 2004 | Edition: Rev Exp

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 in 1980, provides a pioneering total history of the construction, decoration, and uses of a major royal palace, emphasising 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 since the 1970s. A number of new, unpublished illustrations have been added, and many of the plates are now reproduced in colour. The publication of this edition gains added importance from the fact that plans for the expansion of the Prado Museum include the restoration of the Hall of Realms to approximate its original appearance, as reconstructed in this volume.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"...abundance of new color plates... exceeds the original... solid historical study of politics, church, and Spain’s mighty aristocratic families." -- George Stolz, ARTnews

About the Author

Jonathan Brown, Carroll and Milton Petrie Professor of Fine Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and Sir John Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History in the University of Oxford, are joint editors of The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations between Spain and Great Britain, 1604-1655 (ISBN 0 300 09761 1, [pound]45.00*), and have written numerous books on Spanish art and history.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 316 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; Rev Exp edition (January 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300101856
• ISBN-13: 978-0300101850
• Product Dimensions: 11.5 x 10.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,361,672 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How can a book involving Philip IV *not* get five stars?, June 19, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV (Paperback)

On March 31, 1621, Philip III, third Habsburg ruler of Spain, met a premature death, reportedly clutching in panic at the same crucifix his father and grandfather had held on their deathbeds generations before. His son and heir, the sixteen-year-old Philip IV, succeeded to what is now known collectively as the Spanish Empire - a vast conglomeration of lands and people whose progressive decline as a political entity has long remained a basic assumption amongst twentieth century historians and yet whose cultural vitality has given its period the title of "The Golden Age of Spanish Art." The accession of Philip IV seemed to inaugurate a new era of reform after the previous regime's mindless inactivity and self-interested grandee domination. As the contemporary playwright Tirso de Molina remarked, "New architects acceded with the new king."

This premise serves as the central metaphor in A Palace for a King. Elliott, a historian, and Brown, an art historian, examine both the literal and political architecture of the reign, charting the complicated, often surprising interrelation between art and politics. The palace of the title is the Buen Retiro - an intended recreational center built for Philip IV with astonishing speed during the years 1630-33, left largely in neglect after the 1640's, and finally decimated by French and English troops during the Napoleonic wars. In reconstructing the circumstances surrounding its construction and initial occupation, Brown and Elliott attempt to furnish the reader with a "total" history of the Spanish Habsburg court during its penultimate representative's first twenty years of rule.

The scope of the book is immense. In a prose that is precise and elegant, if at times monotonous, it describes the political and economic issues of the day as well as the relationship between the continuously vacillating king and his powerful minister, the Count-Duke of Olivares, who until 1643 held the true control over Spanish government. It then goes on to analyze the palace of the Buen Retiro itself, exploring the process of palace-building and the symbolism of the palace as a repository of the values of the ruling class. Simultaneously, it looks at Spanish baroque painting, theater, and architecture and their inextricable connection to the court at Madrid, which, itself, was in so many ways like a giant theater. Elliott's inquiry and interpretation of the troubles besetting the institution that was then called the monarquía española and of the role played by Olivares makes for particularly rewarding reading.

The book appears to be extremely well-researched and provides an abundance of evidence from primary sources as varied as confidential memoranda, secret expense accounts and drawings of architectural plans; the endnotes alone constitute twenty of its almost three hundred pages. However, it is its very wealth of references and information that also lies at the core of its greatest weakness. Too often, the text becomes bogged down in statistics, where apparently meaningless figures about who paid whom and whose plot of land was where replace any real insights. The authors seem to become trapped in unneeded details, losing track of the larger picture that they originally intended to convey. As a result, in certain chapters, more attention than necessary is devoted to the actual logistics of building the palace and, consequently, not enough to the palace's political, social, and economic implications.

Still, aside from these slightly irritating flaws, Brown and Elliott's work remains a highly absorptive and very informative look at subject that has thus far remained sadly underrepresented amongst the scientific community. The sheer extent of the information to be found makes this book a valuable resource for anyone interested in the period, while the distressing lack of similar studies makes it absolutely essential for those at all curious about Spain's architectural history. It is, in my mind, a fascinating complement and worthy companion to R.A. Stradling's landmark Philip IV and the Government of Spain.