[illuminati1911]

Summary

The existing Static Maps response handler exposes error bodies as image bytes because it bypasses normal HTTP-status validation.

• Validate HTTP status before returning an image iterator. Close non-2xx responses without consuming their bodies and raise HTTPError with the original status.
• Preserve lazy binary streaming for successful responses and existing 500/503/504 retries; leave HTTP 429 retry policy unchanged.
• Add behavioral regression coverage, exception documentation, and an unreleased changelog entry.

Fixes googlemaps#447. Related prior work: googlemaps#446.

Verification

Python 3.10.20 with Requests 2.34.2:

• Focused Static Maps tests: 7 passed, 10 subtests passed.
• Full suite: 109 passed, 10 subtests passed.
• Real loopback HTTP reproduced the bug before the fix and verified immediate terminal errors, successful binary iterator output, transient-to-success retries, and transient-to-terminal errors afterward. No Google API calls or real credentials were used.
• Full Sphinx 8.1.3 HTML build passed with warnings treated as errors. Browser inspection confirmed the exception documentation, iterator contract, exception link, and rendered changelog entry.
• Repository distribution build/install script passed in a temporary source/environment; installed-package import was verified outside the checkout.

Regression coverage.

Statement coverage	Upstream baseline	This change
Total	88.67%	88.73%
Static Maps module	95.38%	95.65%

Verification limits

Python 3.5 and 3.7 are unavailable; the full multi-version CI matrix was not run. The documentation build used Python 3.10 rather than the configured Python 3.7. No Python support minimum changed. Existing setuptools packaging deprecation warnings remain.