"Major work by leading art historian pays a worthy tribute to Alfredo Machado Hernández (1887-1946), founder of the Museo de Arte Colonial in Caracas, and fills an important void in the field. By far the most comprehensive history of furniture and decorative arts in Venezuela during the Spanish colonial period. With painstaking care, author fully describes and attempts to place in original architectural contexts, a representative corpus of works from public and private collections not easily available to researchers. Clear organization by chronological order, covering 17th century to 1812, permits an appreciation of the development of styles across time and the changing tastes of colonial society. Abundant b/w and color illustrations complement informative text. Appendix provides a compilation of historic documents of vital importance, including detailed inventories of houses that represent a cross section of the upper and middle classes"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.