Un planeta engalanadola fiesta en los reinos hispánicos

Abstract

The Spanish monarchy, present across four continents and three oceans throughout the 14th, 15th and 16th centuries, was the first global empire in the history of humanity. The public festivals held in cities were one of the key elements that facilitated the education and cohesion of such different and distant territories and settlers: their ceremonies and performances, their ephemeral architecture and embellishments, and their symbolic speeches constituted a vast repertoire of artistic manifestations that evolved from the Renaissance to neoclassical academicism, but blossomed more especially in the form of the Baroque culture, which was when word and image became fully integrated to the service of the representations of power. This book brings together the texts published in the first five volumes of the collection “Triunfos barrocos” (Baroque triumphs). It allows us to go over the festive art in the Court, the kingdoms of Valencia, Naples, Sicily and Portugal, the American viceroyalties, and the Iberian enclaves and possessions in the Indian and Pacific oceans, showing us a huge highly effective illusionist artifice projected throughout the whole of the known world during the early modern period.