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BOOK REVIEWS339 Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain: Sevillian Confraternities and the Processional Sculpture of Holy Week. By Susan Verdi Webster. (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1998. Pp. xxi, 298. $55.00.) Susan Verdi Webster has written an important, pioneering, book, the title of which,Art and Ritual in Golden-Age Spain, goes far beyond her center of interest , that is, the interconnections between the SeviUian confraternities and the processional sculptures of HolyWeek,better defined in the subtitle. Indeed, publishers, Princeton University Press in this case, should stop giving titles to books that mislead the reader and that are invented only to attract more customers. You will not find there a study on art and ritual in Golden-Age Spain, but a very strong, weU-rounded, analysis of polychrome wood sculptures in seventeenth-century SevUle. That makes the value and the limit of Webster's book. Only in one footnote (15, p. 212), are the other great school of processional sculptures, ValladoUd, and its master, Gregorio Fernández, mentioned. Webster's study would have been enhanced through the comparison of the SeviUian case with the VaUadoUd case, and we would have understood better what made SevUle maybe unique in seventeenth-century Spain. More problematic are the bibUographical references left behind. Although Webster seems to know weU the Spanish secondary sources, she did not use major French ones, crucial for her subject, that were accessible in Spain at the Casa de Velazquez,the French Institute forAdvanced Spanish Studies in Madrid. She should have consulted the magnificent 1993 Thèse d'État of LUiane FaUay d'Esté on Francisco Pacheco, the 1989 fundamental article of Alain Saint-Saëns on "Contraintes et Uberté du sculpteur espagnol après le ConcUe de Trente," and the important 1990 work of Yves Bottineau on L'Art baroque espagnol. She should have used also in English, Alain Saint-Saëns' Art and Faith in Tridentine Spain, 1545-1690 (Peter Lang, 1995), the Second Part of which, "Blood and Tears," was totaUy dedicated to Spanish Golden-Age sculpture and for the biggest part,to the meaning of processional sculptures in SevUle andValladoUd within a Tridentine context. That said, SusanWebster's analysis is clear, convincing, and she succeeds magnificently in replacing the SeviUian sculpture not only within the reUgious context of seventeenth-century SevUle,but also within the economic and social ones. Patronage, along with its suite of unavoidable scandals, bitter rivalries between confraternities, competitive spirit, and worldly prestige gained through these religious processional ensembles, is masterfully explained and enUghtened by accurate quotations from primary sources. This gifted art historian convincingly enhances her analysis by using appropriately the works of renowned historians WUUam Christian,Jr., and Maureen Flynn, and photos of twentieth-century processions during Holy Week. It was a pleasure reading this weU-Ulustrated book, and I would certainly recommend it not only for art history courses but also for Reformation/Counter-Reformation and Early Modern Spain classes. Alain Saint-Saëns Dowling College ...

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