A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV

Abstract

The Buen Retiro, a royal retreat and pleasure palace, was built for Philip IV on the outskirts of Madrid in the 1630s. With its superb display of paintings by Vel zquez and other contemporary artists, the palace became a showcase for the art and culture of Spain's Golden Age. Palace for a King, first published in 1980, provides a pioneering total history of the construction, decoration, and uses of a major royal palace, emphasising the relationship of art and politics at a critical moment in European history. In this extensively revised edition, the authors review the scholarship produced on different aspects of the history of the palace and its decoration since the 1970s. A number of new, unpublished illustrations have been added, and many of the plates are now reproduced in colour. The publication of this edition gains added importance from the fact that plans for the expansion of the Prado Museum include the restoration of the Hall of Realms to approximate its original appearance, as reconstructed in this volume.