August L. Mayer (Griesheim, 1885 – Auschwitz, 1944) was the first art historian to approach the analysis of Spanish painting from a modern methodology, contributing decisively to its international recognition. He was the victim of a terrible campaign to discredit him launched by a group of German professors and museum directors in 1930, and both he and his academic authority have been unjustly clouded until now since the Second World War.

This book however reconstructs the biography of the German Hispanist through letters, testimonies of contemporaries, press notices, records and copious archival documentation.

The author also evaluates Mayer’s contribution to the study of Spanish painting, analysing his seminal work on four artists who successively focused his attention as creators of personal aesthetic languages out of the Spanish pictorial tradition, and who later had wide influence on modern art: Ribera, Goya, El Greco and Velázquez.

Teresa Posada Kubissa holds a Doctorate in History of the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and in 1986 entered the Professional Association of Museum Curators. She has pursued her career in the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo of Madrid, and since 1992 in the Museo Nacional del Prado, where she is in charge of the Flemish Paintings and the Northern Schools.