Alonso Berruguete: First Sculptor of Renaissance Spain is the first major exhibition held outside Spain to celebrate the expressive art of the most important sculptor active on the Iberian Peninsula during the first half of the 16th century, Alonso Berruguete. The exhibition presents an impressive range of more than 40 works from across his career, including one of the early paintings he made while in Italy, where he trained. His abilities as draftsman are also celebrated with the largest group of his drawings ever to be assembled. The primary focus is on his painted sculptures in wood, which generally decorated large altarpieces, or retablos. The Museo Nacional de Escultura in Valladolid, Spain, has lent a substantial group of some of his very best figures. A section of one of his altarpieces is loosely reconstructed in the exhibition to convey an idea of how his sculptures were originally seen.

The exhibition is curated by C. D. Dickerson III, curator and head of sculpture and decorative arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

A fully illustrated catalog accompanying the exhibition is the first general book on Berruguete published in English and features essays by Dickerson as well as Manuel Arias Martínez, head of collections and deputy director, Museo Nacional de Escultura, Valladolid, and Mark McDonald, curator of prints and drawings, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The catalog is published by the National Gallery of Art in association with the Meadows Museum, SMU, Dallas; Centro de Estudios Europa Hispánica/Center for Spain in America, Madrid and New York; and Yale University Press, New Haven and London.