Practical Discourses on the Most Noble Art of Painting

Jusepe Martínez's Practical Discourses on the Most Noble Art of Painting (ca. 1673-75), though little known today, was highly influential on art, artists, and artistic practice and theory in Spain long after its publication. Martínez's wrote it at the end of his long life of travel, painting, and humanistic discussion in Italy and especially the major cultural centers of Spain. His insights and anecdotes benefit from friendships with principal intellectuals and artists of Sapin's Golden Age, including Diego Velazquez and Alonso Cano. This volume is the first English translation of the Discourses, which, while circulated in manuscript copies, was not even published until the mid-nineteenth century.