The Decoration of the Royal Basilica of El Escorial.

Dedicated in the last year of the Council of Trent, the monastery and palace commissioned by Philip II graphically represents an affirmation of ideological power and control amid increasing social, political and economic instability. Dr. Mulcahy's study shows the remarkable coherence and massive scale of the pictorial program and narrates the obstacles confronted and overcome in the rapid completion of the decoration of the basilica, the role of Philip II as patron, and the careers of the Spanish and Italian artists who contributed, as well as the failure of promising Italian painters brought to work in Spain.

Mulcahy's Philip II is sympathetically portrayed as a humanistically educated monarch appreciative of the arts. However, the author describes many of the works he commissioned and approved as "unremarkable," "symmetrical and static," "bland," "lackluster," "prosaic," and, in the case of Luca Cambiaso's Gloria in the choir vault, "a most spectacular failure," mainly because of the iconographical requirements imposed by the king. The claim that more inspired painting "was a technical impossibility in the pre-Baroque period" (74-76), is less convincing than the argument that "Philip II as commissioner of art must be judged by different criteria than Philip II as collector and connoisseur" (212).

Descriptions of technologies and effects of exterior and interior lighting, and contemporary accounts of ceremonies and processions enliven this study of the basilica's stone, bronze, frescoes, and paintings (5-6, 192). Likewise, in chapter six the author uses the surviving correspondence between Castile and Milan to recreate the bustling, noisy world of artists, craftsmen, and bothersome royal officials in the sculpting and bronze casting workshop of Leone and Pompeo Leoni. In chapter two, the author defends Philip II's controversial rejection of El Greco's Martyrdom of St. Maurice and the Theban Legion. The arguments supporting the thesis that "apart from any consideration of style, there was sufficient reason for its rejection" on the basis of nude figures, portraits, and contemporary dress (63), and that works by other painters were rejected for similar reasons, hardly add up to a convincing defense of the monarch's aesthetic sensibilities.

Chapter three's argument concerning Luca Cambiaso's Gloria cites Benito Arias Montano as a likely advisor and reliably orthodox source, in contrast to the "Hermetic and magical world of Llull and Herrera" from which the author wishes, justifiably, to distance the iconographic project (84-86). However, according to Bernard Rekers' research on the learned humanist, biblical scholar and advisor to the king, Arias Montano was denounced for challenging the authenticity of the Vulgate, joined a spiritualist sect in Antwerp, the Family of Love, and proselytized for the sect during his years at the Escorial. In her sixth chapter, on the bronzes of the high altarpiece, Dr. Mulcahy's archival research is at its best in unveiling the participation of an outstanding Flemish sculptor, Adriaen de Vries (whose name appears as "Frias" in the Spanish document), about whose activity during this period no information had been available previously (175-76).

There are ample illustrations in black and white, and the color plates convey the brilliance of color in the frescoes and canvases in the basilica. Dr. Mulcahy devotes chapter five to the artist whose painting was most satisfactory to Philip II, Pellegrino Tibaldi. Ironically, he was brought as an architect, and his frescoes are the least visible, in the high, narrow Sagrario behind the high altar. Despite the unfortunate but unavoidable distortion in the photographs of these frescoes, their dramatic effectiveness is obvious. One problem with the illustrations is that the letters and numbers in Appendix II, a "Key to the Location of Paintings and Sculpture" are barely visible in the corresponding half-page reproduction of the sixteenth-century ground plan. There are also numerous misspellings and typographical errors that could have been corrected by a conscientious copyeditor.

The author's stated intention is to complete the work left unfinished in Padre Julian Zarco Cuevas' studies from the early 1930s, and this study fulfills its scholarly purpose admirably.

EMILIE L. BERGMANN University of California, Berkeley