In an inspired act of programming, in the summer of 2005 the Prado Museum exhibited a selection of paintings associated with the legendary Palace of the Buen Retiro. Not only does the accompanying catalogue shed light on an unparalleled chapter in the artistic patronage of Philip IV of Spain (r. 1621–65), it also marks a resourceful initiative by the Prado to draw attention to the strengths of its own holdings. The museum, which borrowed just three of the roughly sixty works in the exhibition, used the occasion to commemorate an enterprise generally accorded fragmentary coverage in the literature on seventeenth-century European painting. By encompassing such luminaries as Nicolas Poussin, Giovanni Lanfranco, and Diego Velázquez, the publication imparts a sense of unity to a sprawling decorative campaign and illustrates the broad reach of Madrid in an era of royal magnificence.

The essays and catalogue entries represent an elegant response to obstacles that have long confronted historians of the Buen Retiro. The palace, which materialized with unprecedented speed from 1630 to 1640 on the eastern outskirts of Madrid, assumed monumental proportions. A number of smaller structures, including hermitages, came to populate the gardens of the massive villa. As the architects fashioned this regal place of retreat, they generated expanses of decidedly barren walls. In the ensuing drive to remedy this problem, royal agents in the Netherlands, the Italian peninsula, and Spain acquired approximately eight hundred paintings, many of which were composed expressly for their destination. While the grandeur of the decoration is beyond doubt, the spotty survival of historical documents has thwarted a comprehensive analysis of this undertaking. Furthermore, the palace suffered for want of upkeep in the eighteenth century, only to decline precipitously in the next; almost nothing of the building remains today. The pictures, carefully assembled for the enjoyment of the king, therefore were dispersed to other venues or sometimes disappeared. To offer even a partial reconstruction of the collection is to venture into occasionally daunting terrain. It is nonetheless a journey with the prospect of notable rewards, as the curator Andrés Úbeda de los Cobos establishes in his opening essay.

John Elliott and Jonathan Brown then step forth to introduce the patrons behind this epic series of paintings. As the authors of A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1980; revised and expanded edition, 2003), they bring considerable knowledge to this new study. The contribution of Elliott, a historian, is to identify the political, military, and economic developments concerning the government of Madrid. His engaging story of international drama and court life centers on the king and often on the Count-Duke of Olivares. The royal favorite, entrusted with key responsibilities of leadership, extended his influence to the arts, where his most significant imprint was on the Buen Retiro. It also happened to be the most ambitious building and decorative campaign overseen by Philip IV, whose many activities as a patron figure in the subsequent essay by Brown. The art historian links the monarch to the Habsburg practice of collecting paintings on an unrivaled scale. In this respect, the House of Austria surpassed the ruling families of the Italian Renaissance, from whom it had inherited the paradigm characterizing great expenditure on the arts as an attribute of political power.

Brown also steers the book from these preliminary historical studies to the coverage of paintings in the exhibition. In a second, briefer essay, he charts the speedy and occasionally erratic construction of the palace, which advanced not according to a coherent, unified design but rather as an ongoing process of evaluation and reconsideration. The irregular architectural growth reverberated at times in the decoration, in which officials struggled to uphold a measure of consistency. Notwithstanding the absence of a single authoritative plan, the building satisfied the objective of providing what Brown calls a “theater of the arts.” The venue served as the stage on which royalty, courtiers, actors, spectacles, and artworks came together in a harmonious display of majesty. The first set of paintings analyzed in the publication therefore represents some of the protagonists of this realm. Greeting the readers is an exceptional panoramic view from c. 1638 of the newly built palace itself, which virtually gleams with the lofty hopes of Philip IV and the Count-Duke of Olivares. As is habitual of exhibition catalogues, individual entries on the paintings are written by members of a team of curators, conservators, and specialists. The publication also highlights three other pictorial groups through the same combination of a comprehensive essay and specific entries on the exhibited works. The various authors sustain a remarkable coherence of focus for a study with many voices.

A comparable unity of expression characterized efforts by the Spanish painters to decorate the Hall of Realms, the political and emblematic heart of the Buen Retiro. The decorative cycle for this room occupies the attention of José Álvarez Lopera, whose intent in his essay is to assess and contribute to the literature on what is the best understood part of the palace. He begins with the pioneering work in 1911 of Elías Tormo and spans a number of studies before concluding with that of Carmen Blasco, who in 2001 offered an intriguing set of digital images suggesting the original appearance of the building. Two principal themes emerge in this overview. First, in terms of interpreting the ensemble of enormous battle scenes, equestrian portraits, and Herculean imagery, scholars have accepted its place in the tradition of the “Hall of Princely Virtue,” as established by Elliott and Brown in A Palace for a King. This consensus frees Álvarez Lopera to delve into his second concern, which is to explain how historians have finessed limited evidence when tackling the knotty problem of reconstructing the arrangement of the works. The questions under review include the condition of the royal portraits, the order of the battle paintings, and the relationship of the gallery to adjacent rooms. His analysis provides the basis for revisions to the scheme articulated by Elliott and Brown (1980; 2003), which the reader can judge in the accompanying comparative illustrations.

The new proposals have little bearing on the meaning of the cycle, yet they are timely in light of recent developments in Spain. The Prado secured access to a rare extant section of the palatial complex, namely the Hall of Realms itself, which the Museum of the Army had occupied in modern times with assorted displays of principally nineteenth- and twentieth-century artifacts. By way of the provision of a better setting in Toledo for the army museum, the gallery in Madrid will become newly available for the works by Velázquez and his renowned contemporaries. Installing the decoration in its original location would recreate one of the great ensembles of Spanish Golden Age painting, which here extolled the seemingly miraculous, far-reaching power of Philip IV. The restoration will ultimately cast new light on the affinities between the Hall of Realms and other seventeenth-century decorative programs celebrating royal authority, most notably those of the Banqueting House at Whitehall Palace in London and of the palace at Versailles. In contrast to earlier scholars whose hypothetical reconstructions unfolded solely within their publications, Álvarez Lopera composed his essay with knowledge of the urgent, practical questions in store. The Prado will oversee the first reinstallation of these paintings since their removal from the gallery, which constituted the chief motive for this study as well as a fresh look at works from other areas of the palace.

Úbeda de los Cobos, who provides the introductory essay, then returns to offer a measured analysis of a lesser-known series of paintings depicting episodes of the History of Rome. Although he identifies this group as having more pictures than the cycle in the Hall of Realms (thirty-four against twenty-seven), the greater quantity did not yield as coherent a program. One challenge is to corral these paintings into three thematic subsets, and even then Úbeda de los Cobos cautions against expecting a seamless internal unity or rigorous symbolic correspondence with the courtly milieu of Madrid. Several factors inform this careful approach. Whereas Spanish artists decorated the Hall of Realms under the close supervision of their patrons, royal officials in Italy delegated the paintings of ancient subjects to more than a dozen artists in Rome and Naples. After the works arrived in the palace, apparently they decorated not a single room but rather multiple spaces. Despite these circumstances, it is possible to formulate some explanations on the choice of subject matter. For example, the pictures of ancient circuses and public spectacles alluded to one function of the Buen Retiro, which was to delight the king by staging entertainment and otherwise provide respite from his duties.

A similar line of reasoning characterizes the essay by Giovanna Capitelli on the numerous landscapes in the collection. The idyllic images suited a palace with ample parks, and the inclusion of a hermit in several of these paintings surely struck a chord with Philip IV, who could encounter actual hermits on the grounds. Capitelli concentrates her attention, however, on taking stock of the frugal documentary sources in order to clarify the origins of a corpus that has suffered losses. These difficulties have challenged previous authors in identifying the agents responsible for the purchases in the Italian peninsula, although she does a remarkable job of evaluating the prospects and tracing their efforts on behalf of the king. As with the rest of this book, the strengths of the essay lie in the close reading of the available evidence and not in the provision of newly discovered documents. She also expands upon the observation that the choice of such figures as Claude Lorrain and Jan Both was groundbreaking, since the construction of the Buen Retiro coincided with a decade in which Rome harbored few distinguished painters in this genre. The commission from Madrid therefore deserves greater recognition for encouraging a tradition of luminous, classical landscapes, whose practitioners would eventually figure among the most admired artists of western Europe.

The importance of this publication is to strengthen the literature on the Buen Retiro through an unprecedented focus on its pictorial decoration. In support of this objective, the color illustrations surpass those published previously in terms of size and quantity. Readers accordingly will experience a measure of the resplendence that characterized the palace. This book also stands among recent exhibition catalogues issued in Spain on the anniversary of an event in royal history, in this case the fourth centennial of the birth of Philip IV. Taken collectively, the publications advance the court of Madrid as a force that helped to define the evolution of art in early modern Europe. Although the monarchs stood at the forefront of this institution, they drew upon a far-flung network of officials whose expertise transcended their political and administrative duties. One hopes that this study on the Buen Retiro augurs further exhibitions at the Prado on the history of royal patronage.