The Golden Age of Painting in Spain.

In the long Golden Age of Spanish painting studied in this book - it ranges over the years from 1480 to 1700 - Jonathan Brown offers new insights and information on nearly every painter in the Spanish realms before Goya. The author poses the question of what causes painting styles to change or become static. Brown proposes an intriguing answer: the increasing conservatism in Spanish art of the Golden Age was impelled by royal patronage of innovative foreign artists. Spanish monarchs of educated and discerning taste, such as Isabel I, Philip II, and Philip IV, acquired by purchase and commission some of the earliest and greatest collections. But their preference for northern and Italian (particularly Venetian) works diverted royal funds to foreign painters. Because nobles followed the royal example, native artists were deprived of secular patronage, leaving them to the whims of ecclesiastical patrons, whose conservatism limited the thematic repertory of Spanish painters to religious (mostly New Testament) scenes, portraiture, and occasional still lifes.

This interpretation overturns the stereotypes that have polluted studies of Spanish culture. Instead of repeating cliches of isolation and xenophobia, Brown investigates Spanish painters' familiarity with art of other countries. He finds that in the sixteenth century Spanish artists moved around in Europe a great deal, studied in Italy, and adopted many of the new techniques of their Italian masters. But in the seventeenth century this travel stopped. This does not mean that they lost touch with art abroad, however; Spaniards increasingly studied foreign art through prints. They accumulated enormous collections of prints from northern Europe and Italy, immersed themselves in the aesthetics of the Lowlands, and tardily adopted some techniques from Italy.

At the same time, their skills in composition suffered. Brown once again places the responsibility on patrons. Monasteries, prelates, and cathedral chapters in Toledo, Seville, and Valencia commissioned paintings and frescoes on a large scale. They provided the incentive for Spanish artists to evoke "with matchless power and sincerity the beliefs of the Catholic church." Ecclesiastical patrons' demands for religious purity, however, limited styles, themes, iconography, and colors to those that had been approved as theologically correct. Brown's interpretation seems to work well for the great majority of Spanish painters during the Habsburg centuries, who did not adopt Italian innovations.

Of course, no theory can account for the genius of a Murillo or the failure of a Spanish artist residing in Naples, such as Ribera, to match his Italian counterparts. Brown details these exceptions, demonstrating how individual artists working within the Spanish parameters managed to develop great emotional power, as Velazquez did, and to apply Italian styles to ecclesiastical patrons' themes, as El Greco personalized the Italian manner. On this artist, Brown makes one of his most cohesive and lucid connections between society and art, and here, as throughout, his telling arguments gain much of their power from superb integration of the abundant and beautiful illustrations.

Helen Nader INDIANA UNIVERSITY