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 his participation in the rich artistic landscape of Spain's "Golden Age." In this book, Laura Fernandez-Gonzalez 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 hybridity, empire, and globalization in the art and architecture of the Iberian world during the sixteenth century, a time when the Spanish Empire was the largest composite monarchy in the world. Fernandez-Gonzalez 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, Fernandez-Gonzalez shows how design and images traveled across the Iberian world and offers a nuanced assessment of Philip's role in influencing them. Original and important, this panoramic new 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 Fernandez-Gonzalez's research.
Laura Fernandez-Gonzalez is Senior Lecturer in Architectural History at the University of Lincoln. She is the coeditor, with Fernando Checa Cremades, of Festival Culture in the World of the Spanish Habsburgs.
"Laura Fernandez-Gonzalez's attention to understudied buildings is admirable, as is her characterization of the Spanish Empire as one "under construction." Philip II of Spain and the Architecture of Empire promises to make an important contribution to the study of domestic architecture and will certainly put the Royal Archive at Simancas on the map of important undertakings by Philip II."-Jesus Escobar, author of The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid
