Philip IV of Spain (ruled 1621-1665), known as the 'Planet King', shone more brightly in the sphere of the arts than would Louis XIV the Sun King after him. The focus of much of his patronage was the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid, which was once hung with some eight hundred paintings, specially gathered during the 1630s in order to decorate it. They included work commissioned from the finest masters available in all Europe, including the court painters Velázquez, Zurbarán and Ribera (Spanish), the honorary court painter Rubens (Flemish), Claude Poussin (French), Jan Both and Herman van Swanevelt (Dutch), and Domenichino and Lanfranco (Italian). Much about the Buen Retiro Palace and its decoration has remained mysterious, as in the the course of time the palace itself lost its identity and its paintings were dispersed throughout the realm or were lost or stolen. But in 2005 the Museo del Prado has mounted a major exhibition reconstituting the essence of the Buen Retiro and displaying its finest paintings, many of them of great size and magnificence, as a group. This catalogue provides a comprehensive guide and display of the paintings that were once brought together for the Buen Retiro Palace.--Book jacket.