In 1972, Priscilla E. Muller, curator of The Hispanic Society of America (New York), published Jewels in Spain. 1500–1800, a full, well-documented and lavishly illustrated study of the jewels produced within the ambit of the Spanish Monarchy during the 16th to 18th centuries. That edition has become a bibliographical rarity for collectors and experts. That is why The Hispanic Society, the Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica (CEEH) and the Center for Spain in America (CSA) have entrusted to Ediciones El Viso a painstaking update under the supervision of the author, with new images in full colour and in two versions, Spanish and English.

Muller’s work is a basic guide and an irreplaceable reference work for the knowledge of Spanish jewellery, its practitioners and its patrons under the Habsburgs and the Bourbons down to Charles IV. Backed with a wide knowledge of the artistic, historical and cultural context of the sumptuary arts and their commercialisation, it studies some of the finest pieces produced during the time of splendour of the Spanish Monarchy.

Priscilla E. Muller is curator emeritus of the Museum of The Hispanic Society of America (New York). She has published many studies on Spanish art, among them Goya’s “Black” Paintings: Truth and Reason in Light and Liberty (1984), and Sorolla. The Hispanic Society (2004, with Marcus B. Burke). She curated the exhibition Dibujos españoles en la Hispanic Society of America: del Siglo de Oro a Goya (Madrid, 2006–7) together with José Manuel Matilla.