Incomparable Realms

Reviews / Votes

The book offers a superb introduction to a period of imperial brutality . . . handsomely illustrated with colour reproductions of stunning works. Incomparable Realms is a testament to the imbrication and the incommensurability of the earthly and sublime. -- Ian Ellison * Times Literary Supplement * In this admirable and learned study Professor Jeremy Robbins reassesses the Spain of popular imagination - "angels and austerity, morality and morbidity; Habsburg power and discrete opulence" - to examine afresh its culture and society, its art, literature, mystical theology, its ideology, doctrine and "moral polemic" . . . One of the book's significant strengths is the author's close and revealing reading of the paintings, never less than fascinating, illuminating and authoritative. The book includes 39 colour plates and numerous black-and-white images embedded in the text that immeasurably add to the reader's understanding. * Catholic Herald * There's a great deal to ponder in this book: the ties between monarchy and Church, which legitimated a non-Spanish dynasty; Spanish artists' preoccupation with mirrors (Vela?zquez's Las Meninas) and illusion; how the tension between heavenly and earthly realms defines Golden Age culture . . . The illustrations alone make Robbins's book worth purchasing, but it is also a defining study of a seminal period in the history of Western art. * Library Journal * This remarkably rich and readable study does an excellent job of exploring many of the subtle and fascinating
complexities (and occasional paradoxes) of a culture that is easily caricatured and thereby misunderstood . . . The book's prose is lucid. It is lavishly illustrated (with 70 images, including 39 in colour). It is full of interest - particularly suited to students and to the general reader, though even experts will find a good deal of it stimulating. I would have liked it to have been twice as long, but, even as it is, Incomparable Realms resembles
a Schatzkammer of Spanish Habsburg culture. -- Roy Norton * Modern Language Review * A brilliant account of the Spanish Monarchy in its "Golden Age", when it was the foremost power in Europe and ruled a global empire. This is an exceptional achievement by one of the very best cultural historians in the field, combining the art, architecture, literature, social values, political ideas, religious practices, and especially, the thought of Renaissance and Baroque Spain in a coherent and convincing synthesis. Grounded in solid, up-to-date scholarship, it is an invaluable resource for historians, while its lucid style makes this fascinating subject accessible to the general reader. Destined to become a classic of European cultural history. * Edwin Williamson, author of The Penguin History of Latin America * Another fundamental work by one of Britain's foremost scholars on the Spanish Golden Age. Jeremy Robbins delivers a masterful analysis of the intellectual, literary, and visual culture of the global Hispanic world in the early modern period. * Rodrigo Cacho, Professor of Early Modern Iberian and Latin American Literature, University of Cambridge *