1939-2022

Incubated in the 19th century and splendidly developed during the following century, hispanist tradition had in Jonathan Brown its greatest art historian. Born in Massachusetts in 1939, his long career had its seed, as so many art lovers since the times of Monet, in his first visit to the Prado Museum in 1958, and his discovery of Las Meninas, forever transformed into an aesthetic eden. The Velázquez revelation, along with his interest in all things Spanish, encouraged a career of research centered on the Siglo de Oro (Golden Age) and especially on the life and work of Diego Velázquez, whom Brown considered an absolute and unsurpassable genius. From his chairs at Oxford, New York, and Princeton, Brown collaborated intensely with the Prado Museum in the historiographic revision of its collections and in setting up major exhibitions on the Spanish Baroque, compiling his research in essential titles like Velázquez: Painter and Courtier and, especially, A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Phillip IV, written with J. H. Elliott and considered today a classic renovator of the historiography of art.