Yet painting in Spain is far richer than this view supposes. During the Renaissance the splendid court of Philip II led a society made wealthy by a monopoly on New World trade. His Spain became a mecca for the finest artists of Europe, especially those from Italy and the Netherlands. During the next 250 years, a glorious art of painting flourished at the Habsburg and Bourbon courts in Madrid, and in the cities of Seville, Valencia, and Toledo: majestic, fiercely emotional, elegant, and urbane. From the insightful portraits of El Greco and Velazquez to the stark poetry of Zurbaran's religious works, from images of monarchic authority to courtly entertainments, painters working in Spain created an art of extraordinary stature, woven into the international world of Mannerism, the Baroque, and the Rococo. Janis Tomlinson traces these myriad influences as they developed from generation to generation of artists, culminating in the unique accomplishment of Francisco Goya, last of the old masters and first of the moderns. Book jacket.

Goya, El Greco, and Velasquez were three of the greatest Spanish artists of his time. Discover some of their greatest masterpieces through this gorgeously illustrated collection of paintings formatted specifically for coloring.

Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy is the first book-length examination of the early career of one of the early modern period’s most notoriously misunderstood figures. Born around 1541, Domenikos Theotokopoulos began his career as an icon painter on the island of Crete. He is best known, under the name “El Greco,” for the works he created while in Spain, paintings that have provoked both rapt admiration and scornful disapproval since his death in 1614. But the nearly ten years he spent in Venice and Rome, from 1567 to 1576, have remained underexplored until now. Andrew Casper’s examination of this period allows us to gain a proper understanding of El Greco’s entire career and reveals much about the tumultuous environment for religious painting after the Council of Trent. Art and the Religious Image in El Greco’s Italy is a new book in the Art History Publication Initiative (AHPI), a collaborative grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Thanks to the AHPI grant, this book will be available in popular e-book formats.

A visually stunning examination of El Greco’s work that considers the artist’s constant reinvention and professional drive Renowned for a singular artistic vision, Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known as El Greco (1541–1614), developed his distinctive painting style as he assiduously pursued professional success. This fresh and engaging survey of El Greco’s work explores varied aspects of the artist’s career—his aesthetic education in Italy, the mixed reception of his mature works in Spain, his uncompromising approach to business, and the baroque logistics of his Toledo workshop—and reveals the depth of El Greco’s astounding ambition. The impressive volume focuses in particular on his 1577–79 altarpiece paintings for the Church of Santo Domingo el Antiguo in Toledo—among them the magnificent Assumption of the Virgin—which heralded the artist’s arrival in Spain after productive periods of formation and re-formation in Crete, Venice, and Rome. Lavishly illustrated and clothbound with gilded edges, this publication features reproductions and scholarly discussions of more than 60 works ranging from large-scale canvases to intimate panels, with essays that elucidate the motives and meanings behind the artist’s constantly changing and inventive approach.

Presents a survey of the development of this genre in Spanish art from the 15th century to the early decades of the 20th, through a selection of 87 works.