Velázquez Career can be characterised as a lifelong examination of the relationship of painting to nature, in which bushwork takes a leading role. As he developed, he realised evergreater physical and psycological naturalism with progressively more pronounced and elegant brushstrokes, attaining miracolous effects of illusion with and astounding, abbreviated technique based on the implication rather than the elaboration of detail.
The synthesis of the life and work Velázquez that the Professor Santiago Alcolea i Gil writes in this book offer the reader a wide overview of the work of one of the world s most oustanding creative artists of all time.

Renowned as the largest art gallery in the world, the Prado houses sculptures, drawings, coins, and other works of art—but it is its incomparable collection of paintings which had drawn fame worldwide. Included in its store of more than 8,600 paintings are works by members of the Italian, Flemish, Spanish, French, Dutch, and German schools. Albrecht Dürer, Anton van Dyck, Correggio,El Greco, Goya, Hieronymous Bosch, José de Ribera, Lucas Cranach, Nicolas Poussin, Pieter Brueghel, Rafael, Rembrandt, Rogier van der Veyden, Rubens, Sandro Botticelli,Tiepolo,Tintoretto,Tiziano,Velázquez,and nearly every other master painter from the 12th to the 20th century is represented in the Prado’s magnificient collection.The history of the museum began during the reign of Charles III, but it did not really concretize as an institution until the reign of Fernando VII, under whom the Royal Museum of Painting and Sculpture was founded in 1819.With the disapearance of the Spanish monarchy, the museum became national property and was renamed the Prado Museum. Only a tenth of the Prado’s immense collection of works are normally on show.Architect Rafael Moneo (Pritzker Prize in 1996) has designed a plan to join the existing neo- classical building with two nearby historical buildings, the cloister of the San Jerónimo church and a 17th-century palace, by buried passageways. 

Francis Bacon's works has a strength and vitality that has led to his position as one of the greatest twentieth century artist. The violent intensity with which his paintings give expression to the existential angst of his felow human beings is virtually without parallel in the history of the art. Bacon s work (1909-1992) undoubtedly includes some of the most extraordinary and powerful paintings in modern art, reflecting the isolation and terror of the human condition, conveyed by the distortion of features and the nude body. This volume that join the centenary of the artist and the upcoming exhibitions at the Tate Britain, London; The Prado Museum, Madrid; and The Metropolitan Museum, New York comprises his series of portraits and selfportraits, the weirdly beautiful yet terrifying variations of Velázquez s Pope Innocent X, the painfully moving Crucifixion, the enigmatic figure studies and twelve gatefolds of the powerful triptychs. The 240 paintings were selected by the artists himself and he was closely involved with every aspect of their reproduction of this monograph.

A leading figure in the baroque Spanish tradition — alongside El Greco, Velázquez and Zurbarán — José Ribera’s style was the most markedly tenebrist; he was also one of the first artists to be both a painter and printmaker. In his earlier style, sometimes drawing on Caravaggio and sometimes on Guido Reni’s various techniques, his study of Spanish and Venetian masters can be traced. Along with his massive and predominant shadows, one of his strongest points throughout his career was the use he made of color. In the early 1630s his style moved away from strong contrasts of dark and light to the use of more diffused and golden lighting. Javier Portús, chief curator of the Spanish Baroque art department at the Museo del Prado, takes a fresh look at Ribera’s career, focusing his research on the early years, less studied by art historians till date.

With Velázquez and El Greco, Zurbarán (1598-1664) is undoubtedly one of the best known seventeenth-century Spanish monastic ascetism, has come to the forefront once again in the XX century, thanks party to cubism, which contributed to rediscovery of the great plastic qualities of his work. Indeed, if the simplicity of his artistic preparation reflects a melancholy and somewhat unrefined temperament, and his painting contains a rustic accent, in his work there is a preponderance of plastic values that respond to a concern with giving a concrete form to the construction os the spirit. Profesor Santiago Alcolea provides us with an overview of the whole Zurbaran s artistic career structured into four periods marked by important events that led to major changes in his style.