Sculpture collections in Early Modern Spain (original) (raw)

Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio and Rosario Coppel, Sculpture Collections in Early Modern SpainFarnham and Burlington, VT, Ashgate, 2013, 464 pp., 20 b&w illustrations, £85. ISBN 978-1-4094-6904-9This extremely useful book examines the presence of sculpture in sixteenthand seventeenth-century collections in Spain. It largely succeeds in its aim to demonstrate that sculpture formed a more significant part in royal, aristocratic and middle-class collections than has hitherto been assumed. Kelley Helmstutler Di Dio and Rosario Coppel have examined hundreds of inventories, assessments and divisions of possession in Spanish libraries and archives, and publish relevant summaries of or extracts from 160 of them, ranging in date from Miquel Mai in 1546 to Juan Gaspar Enriquez de Cabrera y Sandoval in 1691. Thus the period surveyed covers what is generally regarded as the golden age of Spanish power and influence, from the heyday of its imperial presence in Italy, whence so many of the sculptures to reach Spanish collections came, through to its decline as a leading European power and the end of the Habsburg ruling dynasty in Spain, with the death in 1700 of King Charles II.The inventories, which form by far the greatest portion of the book, are introduced with a helpful glossary of key terms, measurements, materials and monetary values. They are prefaced by four essays, which survey the collecting of sculpture in Spain, in royal collections, aristocratic collections and in collections formed by other less exalted individuals - court functionaries, diplomats, scholars, artists and merchants. As in other European societies, these distinctions are in practice less evident than they might at first seem to be, with most collectors seeking to a greater or lesser extent to emulate the patterns of taste set within the royal and princely collections. The taste of the Spanish monarchs broadly reflected that of their counterparts in other European countries such as Britain and France, with a particular enthusiasm for antiquities or, more commonly, copies after antiquity, as well as works by the greatest modern Italian sculptors, including Giovanni Bologna, Alessandro Algardi and Gianlorenzo Bernini. Some aspects of Spanish royal and aristocratic collecting have been relatively well-published, for example Diego Velasquez's mission to Italy in 1649-51 to procure sculptures and plaster casts for King Philip IV's collection, or the inventories of the 3rd Duque de Alcala, drawn up in 1637 (doc. 53). But much of the research for this volume is entirely new, providing us with a much broader and more comprehensive picture of Spanish taste for sculpture. One constant theme to emerge is the frequency and strength of the political, commercial and cultural links between Spain and Italy at this time, which unquestionably stimulated the collecting patterns documented in this volume. Aristocratic collectors might serve as Governor of Milan or as Viceroy in Naples, for instance Pedro Alvarez de Toledo (doc. 2), who served in the latter post between 1532 and 1553, and whose collection was essentially an Italian one, formed in Naples and kept in his residence La Duchesca, where it was inventoried on his death in 1553. Some of the most significant and influential collections were those formed by Italian artists, who spent much of their careers working for the court in Madrid, notably Jacopo da Trezzo (doc. …