Smith Bradley. Spain: A History in Art

Doubleday, 1971. — 304 p.The color and shadow, the dazzling light and ascetic darkness — the sol and the sombra — of Spanish life and Spanish civilization, from prehistory to modern times, are captured as never before in this extraordinary book.
In it, two hundred and forty-five works of art, newly photographed by one of America's great photographers in Spanish museums and private
collections, are faithfully reproduced, unretouched. Every plate is in full color. They are juxtaposed to form a visual chronicle of Spain over the centuries: her royal dynasties, her invaders, her conquests; the flowering of her many cultures; the fervors, inspirations and excesses of her religious experience; the unparalleled adventure of her great age of exploration; the opulence of the court, the horrors of the lower depths; her fierce beauty, her sombre mysticism.
From the incredible cave paintings of Altamira (20,000 B.C.) and the little-known Phoenician ceramics to the glories of Moorish art, from the rare legacy of the Romanesque and Mudejar painters and sculptors to the masterpieces of El Greco, Velazquez, Zurbaran, Goya, Miro and Picasso— here is a richness of Spain's visual treasure far beyond any previously assembled in a single volume. Indeed, many of the works of art have never before been photographed or reproduced.
The whole complex of Spanish life and feeling is revealed in striking and often astonishing detail. On an ancient clay vessel: a bull is tamed. On a 13th-century illuminated manuscript: a monument of harmony amidst strife as a blind Moslem and a Christian play a duet upon their lutes. Ignatius
of Loyola is portrayed by a contemporary painter, receiving a charter from the Pope to found the Society of Jesus. Queen Isabella rides with King Ferdinand to accept the surrender of the Moslems at Granada. Cervantes at the height of his career sits for his portrait. Velazquez records the surrender at Breda. Goya, in fury and compassion, forges an epic image of his country's struggle for independence.
The lyric life of the village, the cruel power of the Inquisition, the vibrant melancholy of flamenco, the symbolism and actuality of the torero, the agonized spiritual search, the love of life and the obsession with death — the paradoxical, mysterious, eternally alluring atmosphere of Spain has never been more vividly evoked.
Among the many delights of this volume are pages from the chronicle of Alfonso el Sabio — the medieval scholar-warrior-king who gathered about him the finest miniaturists, illuminators and historians in the land, commanding them to set forth the great events of his country's past. Harking back to that tradition, Bradley Smith has gathered, from all the generations of Spanish art, this incomparable gallery of paintings, sculptures, tapestries, murals, illuminations, objets d'art, to make immediate the pageant of Spanish history, to capture the essence of the Spanish spirit.