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.

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.

With its selection as the court of the Spanish Habsburgs, Madrid became the de facto capital of a global empire, a place from which momentous decisions were made whose implications were felt in all corners of a vast domain. By the seventeenth century, however, political theory produced in the Monarquía Hispánica dealt primarily with the concept of decline. In this book, Jesús Escobar argues that the buildings of Madrid tell a different story about the final years of the Habsburg dynasty. Madrid took on a grander public face over the course of the seventeenth century, creating a “court space” for residents and visitors alike. Drawing from the representation of the city’s architecture in prints, books, and paintings, as well as re-created plans standing in for lost documents, Escobar demonstrates how, through shared forms and building materials, the architecture of Madrid embodied the monarchy and promoted its chief political ideals of justice and good government. Habsburg Madrid explores palaces, public plazas, a town hall, a courthouse, and a prison, narrating the lived experience of architecture in a city where a wide roster of protagonists, from architects and builders to royal patrons, court bureaucrats, and private citizens, helped shape a modern capital. Richly illustrated, highly original, and written by a leading scholar in the field, this volume disrupts the traditional narrative about seventeenth-century Spanish decadencia. It will be welcomed by specialists in Habsburg Spain and by historians of art, architecture, culture, economics, and politics.

The image of Philip II (1527-98) as stern and assiduous defender of his political inheritance and of the catholic faith is tempered and enriched by the image of patron and collector of art. During the forty-two years of his reign (1556-98) through widespread patronage and persistent guidance he transformed the arts in Spain, then largely provincial, into the international and modern. The building of the Escorial - known in its own time as the eighth wonder of the world - and other royal residences attracted artists and craftsmen to enter the royal service, among them Titian, Anthonis Mor, El Greco, Federico Zuccaro, Pompeo, Leoni and Alonso Sanchez Coello. Part of his collection was to form the basis of the Prado Museum when it was founded in the nineteenth century. Although Philip is recognized as one of the most important art patrons of the Renaissance little has been published in English on his remarkable achievement. This selection of essays by Rosemarie Mulcahy gives a sense of the variety of talent, both Spanish and foreign, that flourished under Philip II's patronage and provides fascinating insights into the king's artistic projects. The topics covered include: the function of religious art, court portraiture, art and diplomacy, art as propaganda, the use of preparatory drawings. The volume contains 16 colour plates and over 100 black and white illustrations.

Philip II is not only the most famous king in Spanish history, but one of the most famous monarchs in English history: the man who married Mary Tudor and later launched the Spanish Armada against her sister Elizabeth I. This compelling biography of the most powerful European monarch of his day begins with his conception (1526) and ends with his ascent to Paradise (1603), two occurrences surprisingly well documented by contemporaries. Eminent historian Geoffrey Parker draws on four decades of research on Philip as well as a recent, extraordinary archival discovery—a trove of 3,000 documents in the vaults of the Hispanic Society of America in New York City, unread since crossing Philip’s own desk more than four centuries ago. Many of them change significantly what we know about the king. The book examines Philip’s long apprenticeship; his three principal interests (work, play, and religion); and the major political, military, and personal challenges he faced during his long reign. Parker offers fresh insights into the causes of Philip’s leadership failures: was his empire simply too big to manage, or would a monarch with different talents and temperament have fared better?

Festivals and ceremonials played a major role in the Spanish world; through them local identities as well as a common Spanish culture made their presence manifest within and beyond the peninsula through ephemeral displays, music and print. This book explores Habsburg Visual culture at court and its connection with the creation of a language of triumph, the relationship between religion and the empire, and examines cultural, artistic and musical exchange in Naples and Rome. Taken together these essays contribute further to our growing appreciation of the importance of early-modern festival culture in general, and their significance in the world of the Spanish Habsburgs in particular.

Reassesses King Philip II's reputation as narrow-minded tyrant, describes the major events of his reign, and presents a more rounded depiction of his personality

Examines the intellectual and artistic foundations of the Imperial Renaissance in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Italy and traces its political realization in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe.

The essays presented in this volume were delivered as papers by British, Filipino, and Spanish historians at a conference in Manila on December 1-2, 1999.