Art: Dogma Shaped in Stone

... a bulwark impregnable to the new doctrines, in which Throne and Religion can take shelter confident that not one single idea of those which are stirring up the world will penetrate within.

Spain's great and brooding Escorial was built to be a royal court, reliquary, monastery, art gallery, basilica and a pantheon of kings all joined in one. But most of all it was—and is—the symbol of the change-resisting spirit of Spain, as Philip II defined it when he decreed its construction. Now celebrating its fourth centenary, the Royal Monastery of San Lorenzo...