This book offers the first interpretation of Spanish architectural patronage in Naples during the reigns of Philip II and Philip III of Spain. The principal architecutral protagonists are Domenico Fontana (1543-1607) and his son Giulio Cesare (1580-1627), whose projects in Naples and Spain are set within the context of the cultural politics of the Monarquia Hispànica. Rather than being seen as resistant to habsburg imperialism, Naples (the most loyal city) actually participated, on a number of different levels, in the imperial program of the monarchy. While focusing on engineering and secular architecture, this book also takes related projects into account, such as commissions for major public sculptures and one fresco cycle, as well as the restoration and reuse of existing monuments and spaces. In this book, Sabina de Cavi discusses the evolution of Neapolitan architecture in ca. 1600 in relation to Rome, Palermo and Madrid, and in doing so casts light on the local process behind public commissions, and suggests a tentative explanation for the delayed flowering of Baroque architecture in Naples.

This book investigates the Casa de Montejo and considers the role of the building’s Plateresque façade as a form of visual rhetoric that conveyed ideas about the individual and communal cultural identities in sixteenth-century Yucatán. C. Cody Barteet analyzes the façade within the complex colonial world in which it belongs, including in multicultural Yucatán and the transatlantic world. This contextualization allows for an examination of the architectural rhetoric of the façade, the design of which visualizes the contestations of autonomy and authority occurring among the colonial peoples.

These essays constitute the first radical reassessment since the nineteenth century of the role of architecture as an expression of lordship and status among Scottish secular and ecclesiastical elites in the period c.1124–c.1650. These studies of the architectural patronage of particular families or groups explore how the nobility operated socially and economically, as well as politically, in the organisation and structure of lordship throughout the medieval and renaissance periods. The contributors draw on the traditions and strengths of Scottish genealogical, archaeological and art-historical enquiry to illustrate key themes, which include: family or kindred styles in building on a local, regional or national level; builders' or patrons' motives; the scale and use of the buildings; and ascertainable changes in function, purpose and attitude.

Philip II of Spain was a major patron of the arts, best known for his magnificent palace and royal mausoleum at the Monastery of San Lorenzo of El Escorial. However, neither the king’s monastery nor his collections fully convey the rich artistic landscape of early modern Iberia. In this book, Laura Fernández-González examines Philip’s architectural and artistic projects, placing them within the wider context of Europe and the transoceanic Iberian dominions. Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire investigates ideas of empire and globalization in the art and architecture of the Iberian world during the sixteenth century, a time when the Spanish Empire was one of the largest in the world. Fernández-González illuminates Philip’s use of building regulations to construct an imperial city in Madrid and highlights the importance of his transformation of the Simancas fortress into an archive. She analyzes the refashioning of his imperial image upon his ascension to the Portuguese throne and uses the Hall of Battles in El Escorial as a lens through which to understand visual culture, history writing, and Philip’s kingly image as it was reflected in the funeral commemorations mourning his death across the Iberian world. Positioning Philip’s art and architectural programs within the wider cultural context of politics, legislation, religion, and theoretical trends, Fernández-González shows how design and images traveled across the Iberian world and provides a nuanced assessment of Philip’s role in influencing them. Original and important, this panoramic work will have a lasting impact on Philip II’s artistic legacy. Art historians and scholars of Iberia and sixteenth-century history will especially value Fernández-González’s research.

Pathbreaking essays challenging the traditional focus on the eastern Mediterranean in the Hellenistic period and on Rome in the West.