• StanCall
• Contents
• Façade of the west front
• Façade with San Lorenzo
• Façade of the Basilica
• The Patio de los Evangelistas
• The Palace of Valsain and the creation of a Habsburg style
• Building in progress
• Engineering
• Extracts from Padre Sigüenza
• Velázquez and Philip IV
• El Alcázar
• Las Meninas
• Description of Las Meninas
• Two topoi: King visits artist in studio &The nobility of painting
• The siege of the town of Breda
• La rendición de Breda
• Bibliography

Bibliography on El Escorial

George Kubler is the author of the standard and highly researched study of El Escorial.

Santiago Sebastián, Arte y humanismo, Cátedra, Madrid, 1976. The author gives an interesting study of the Library in the Escorial, and its scientific symbolism, of the Patio de los Evangelistas and the original iconology of its fountain. He also elaborates on Taylor's thesis. See below.

René Taylor, "Architecture and Magic. Considerations on the Idea of the Escorial" in Essays on the History of Architecture Presented to Rudolf Wittkower, Vol. I, London, 1967. This article draws together Renaissance scientific-hermetic material and relates it to Felipe II's and Herrera's concept of the Escorial and to the design of the Basilica.

Bibliography on Velázquez

Jonathan Brown, Diego de Velázquez, Painter and Courtier, Yale University Press, 1986.

Images and Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Painting, Princeton University Press, 1978

J.Brown and J.H.Elliott, A Palace for a King. The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1980. Chapter on the Salón de Reinos deals with the battle pictures in that Hall