The artistic efflorescence of late seventeenth-century Seville coincided with the city’s economic and political decline. This apparent paradox is at the center of Amanda Wunder’s important book: a vibrant exploration of sacred art and architecture created in a period of crisis. During the seventeenth century, Seville suffered floods, droughts, and a plague that killed half the population in 1649; it also lost its monopoly on New World trade. Wunder provides a compelling account of how Sevillians responded to calamity through what they called “divine methods” and “human methods,” commissioning religious images and monuments that at once atoned for sins and employed workers (1). She goes beyond traditional discussions of canonical works to examine the materials that constituted Seville’s visual culture, from the fabrics that adorned sculptures to the bindings of books. She further contextualizes her analysis by considering well-known artists and patrons alongside the anonymous artisans and more modest donors who helped to construct Baroque Seville.

Chapter 1 focuses on the first half of the century, functioning as a prelude to the chapters that follow. Its central figure is Mateo Vázquez de Leca, an heir to a New World fortune who became a local model of piety and patronage. Among other contributions to Sevillian public life, he endowed funds for Corpus Christi festivals and worked to secure the place of the Immaculate Conception in popular devotion. He donated alhajas (luxury objects) to charity, eventually divesting himself of images such as Martínez Montañés’s Christ of Clemency. Wunder perceptively relates this gesture to writings by John of the Cross, who admonished those seeking spiritual perfection to forgo the pleasures of sacred art.

Subsequent chapters examine divine and human methods in the period following the plague. Chapter 2 investigates the reconstruction of Santa María la Blanca, a former synagogue whose dedication to “Mary the White” became closely associated with the Immaculate Conception. Led by Justino de Neve, the scion of a merchant family, wealthy residents from the surrounding neighborhood funded the church’s transformation into an exquisite example of Baroque architecture and ornamentation. The church’s reopening in 1665 distinguished the patrician neighborhood as a site of Marian devotion. Outside, residents displayed masterpieces from their collections, including paintings by Raphael and Titian, as well as Murillo’s Immaculate Conception of Los Venerables and his series on the life of Jacob. In an insightful analysis, Wunder reads the Jacob paintings alongside sermons preached for the reopening, which likened the benefactors of the reconstruction to Jacob himself, who rebuilt an altar on a site first chosen by Abraham. Chapter 3 examines the 1671 beatification of Fernando III, who had reconquered Seville from Muslim rule. Here, the protagonist is the cathedral where the thirteenth-century king was buried. Despite financial woes, the cathedral spared little expense on the beatification festivals, whose highlights included a monument designed by Valdés Leal and a life-size effigy of Fernando sculpted by Pedro Roldán. Integral to Wunder’s account is the lavish tome that commemorated the event. The book was intended to reinforce the promotion of Fernando’s (ultimately unsuccessful) canonization cause and to remind the Madrid court of Seville’s historical importance. Chapter 4 examines the church and hospital of Seville’s exclusive Brotherhood of Charity, which rose to prominence under the leadership of Miguel de Mañara. Wunder shifts scholarly attention from the church’s painted decorations to the tombs lining the floor. Expressions of the brotherhood’s ideals, the epitaphs employed a “rhetoric of humble nobility,” extolling the deceased for supposedly repudiating worldly acclaim (113). In one striking example, a “gentleman-in-waiting to Don Juan of Austria” was commemorated for choosing to be interred where “all would step on him” (109).

Wunder’s culminating chapter considers the rebuilding of Seville’s oldest church: San Salvador, a converted ninth-century mosque. In contrast to Santa María la Blanca, San Salvador was reconstructed through small contributions collected over decades. Builders worked for free, and locals offered household goods such as furniture and clothing. Although the austerity of San Salvador’s exterior was a function of financial constraints, it ultimately contributed to the imposing character of the church and its surrounding plaza.

While focused on Seville, this exemplary study will be of value to anyone interested in the material aspects of early modern civic culture. Wunder’s attention to craftsmanship is appropriately matched by the high production quality of the book itself, whose illustrations bring seventeenth-century Seville vividly to life.