Rose Walker opens her book by saying that the original idea for it came from a lack of suitable teaching material in English, and this is perhaps the key to the approach that she has adopted. While setting out clearly her own conclusions on many issues, the author also makes clear where she diverges from the views of others and provides full references, including to the most up-to-date literature. Students thus may use her book as a departure point for looking further into particular issues, while those already familiar with the literature will find that her overview provides very many new insights. The one limitation to the book is that the breadth of its purview is not matched by the number of illustrations that it has been possible to include, which means that sometimes a detailed description of a particular item in the text cannot be followed in a matching illustration. Walker states that she hopes to make good this deficiency by putting an extensive range of images on her web site (rosewalker.co.uk): meanwhile, readers may find it helpful to have other well-illustrated sources, such as the Hispania Antiqua series, open on their desks beside them.

The scope of Walker's work is sweeping: from the fourth century to the eleventh, with a detailed analysis of the surviving architecture, sculpture and metalwork, though with less emphasis on manuscript painting. This material is always set into the context of the patrons who commissioned it, and of the prevailing social and economic conditions lying behind it. For the overall framework within which to set such an analysis she has avoided the usual dichotomy between North and South, between Christian and Islamic. Instead she has looked for what united the peninsula through its natural geography and lines of communication, enabling the interchange of artistic ideas and forms between the various polities, often transcending their religious affiliations.

The book throws important light on many aspects of ecclesiastical history. Christianity becomes visible in the peninsula during the fourth century through its funerary culture, but in her view there is no clear evidence for other purpose-built churches before the early fifth century (the archaeological sequence for the complex at Terrasa she considers controversial). During the Visigothic period she sees Iberia as conforming to a similar pattern to that in other successor kingdoms to the Roman empire, in which architecture re-used earlier structures and materials and showed no high degree of innovation. Most importantly, she follows the most recent Spanish research which throws into question the Visigothic date of very many of the churches previously assigned to that period: even the iconic church of San Juan de Baños with its inscription naming King Reccesuinth.

Following the establishment of the Islamic emirate of Córdoba, there was a major revival of the arts in the south of the peninsula in the second half of the eighth century; but there was no similar revival in the north until a century later, with the series of churches and other monuments erected between 842 and 910 by Ramiro i, Ordoño i and Alfonso iii (the famous San Julian de los Prados is here attributed to the last-named king). The ensuing tenth century was a period to which Spanish scholars now assign a significant number of the churches previously attributed to earlier dates, while Walker goes further in suggesting that many may belong to the middle and second half of the century. Some of these monuments display an aesthetic and a technology, inaccurately labelled ‘Mozarabic’, which reflect a sharing by northern patrons in a culture of which the creative core lay in al-Andalus. There it reached its high point in the palace at Madīnat al-Zahrā and the spectacular extension of the great mosque at Córdoba executed under the first two caliphs, ‘Abd al-Rahmān iii and al-Hakam ii.

In the northern kingdoms artistic activity and experimentation fell back in the last quarter of the tenth century under the impact of the campaigns of the vizier al-Mansur. But with the collapse of the caliphate and rise of the successor taifa kingdoms in the early eleventh century, the northern kingdoms saw an influx of wealth from mercenary and paria payments, and from booty that included luxury objects in precious metal, ivory and silk. In consequence, the second and third quarters of the century witnessed a revival in artistic endeavour that ran parallel to the beginnings of Romanesque art elsewhere in Europe. An increasing orientation to the world north of the Pyrenees, and antagonism towards al-Andalus, developed towards the end of the eleventh century and saw the emergence of mature Romanesque art in sculpture and architecture. Walker sees this as linked to the friendship circle of the papacy, with papal legates operating across boundaries as agents for reform and for artistic interaction.

Walker's work represents a significant achievement in successfully bringing together the most recent research on Spanish and Portuguese art and architecture of her study period, while setting this into its wide historical context. The book will be an essential introduction to, and overview of, the subject for some time to come. The only significant criticism must be of the publishers, who have reduced many of the photographs specially taken by John Batten to muddy brown obscurity. This is clearly not the fault of the photographer, as can be seen by contrasting the reproduction of the same photograph on the cover and at fig. 93. Do the publishers not care? They should do when pricing the book at €189.

Peter Reed's book represents a significant contrast to Walker's. It has a more limited chronological and geographical scope; furthermore, it places little emphasis on the wider cultural context of the monuments. It is in the main a purely architectural study and, while providing a clear and detailed analysis of individual buildings, it does not always seem to be aware of the most recent archaeological research on them. A significant strength, however, is the extensive series of photographs, plans and elevations of the buildings discussed.

The first third of the book covers pre-Romanesque architecture: Visigothic, Asturian and ‘Mozarabic’. Here the main monuments are discussed in their traditional categories, although some of the questions that have been raised about their dating in recent scholarship are at least recognised. The author then moves on to pre-Romanesque in Catalonia. This forms a prelude to the main part of the book, which is the study of ‘First Romanesque’ in Catalonia, focusing around the church of Sant Vincenç at Cardona. In a final part the author considers the relationship between this Catalonian architecture and Romanesque in Europe more widely.

Reed's book will be of interest particularly to those interested in the late tenth-century and eleventh-century architecture of Catalonia, of which he provides a detailed study – appearing nearly a century after the initial definition of the subject in 1928 by the Catalan scholar Josep Puig y Cadafalch. But readers interested in the wider subject of Iberian early medieval art and its context will be better advised to start with Walker's survey.