The Cambridge Companion to Velzquez - Cambridge Companions to the History of Art

The Cambridge Companion to Velzquez, first published in 2002, offers a synthetic overview of one of the greatest painters of Golden Age Spain and seventeenth century Europe as a whole. With contributions from art historians and those working in other disciplines, this book offers fresh approaches to the vast literature on this artist. Velzquezs portraits of his patron, King Philip IV, and his wives are examined by two historians in an effort to reconstruct their reception and readings by contemporaries. Two historians of Golden Age Spanish literature provide an interdisciplinary account of the relationships between poetry, theater, and the visual arts at the Spanish court, as practiced by Velzquez, the poet Francisco de Quevedo and the dramatist, Caldern de la Barca. An expert on the history of Spanish music offers an unprecedented examination of how instruments play in Velzquezs compositions.