The Cambridge Companion to Velazquez

The Cambridge Companion to Velàzquez 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. Velàzquez's 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 Velàzquez, the poet Francisco de Quevedo and the dramatist, Calderòn de la Barca. An expert on the history of Spanish music offers an unprecedented examination of how instruments 'play' in Velàzquez's compositions.

Suzanne L. Stratton-Pruitt is an independent scholar of Spanish Baroque art. A recipient of grants from the American Philosophical Society, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. In 1994, the Spanish government awarded Dr. Stratton-Pruitt the Lazo de Dama de la Orden de Isabel la Catolica medal, in recognition of her work on behalf of the wider understanding of Spanish culture