A Key Tool for a New Dynasty: The Use of Royal Sites in the Habsburg Netherlands by the Archdukes Albert and Isabella

Abstract

Today, royal sites in Europe are often seen as the extravagant residences of royal families who lived isolated from society, an image created by historians and writers in the nineteenth century. Therefore, although there have been many excellent studies of the buildings with some attention to the tradition of royal hunts and urbanism, other spaces that developed around them that were also crucial components of early modern royal sites have so far been neglected. This article takes a more holistic approach to the study of these sites in order to reconsider their role in the evolution of power and the construction of European identities in the early modern period. By doing so, it brings a new approach to the study of royal sites. In particular, this article examines the programme developed by the Archdukes Albert and Isabella for the royal sites of the Habsburg Netherlands (modern Belgium) and the ways in which they used them to give structure and cohesion to their territories.

Notes

1 This idea has been developed since the 1990s. See John H. Elliot, ‘A Europe of Composite Monarchies’, Past and Present 137 (1992), pp. 48-71.

2 Manuel Rivero Rodríguez, ‘El Consejo de Italia y la territorialización de la Monarquía (1554–1600)’, in Ernest Belenguer Cebrià (ed.), Felipe II y el Mediterráneo, 4 vols (Madrid, 1998), vol. III, pp. 97-113.

3 This terminology has gained currency following the publication of Pedro Cardim, Tamar Herzog, José Javier Ruíz Ibáñez and Gaetano Sabatini (eds), Polycentric Monarchies. How did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain Global Hegemony? (Eastbourne, 2013).

4 For a study of this process of integration, see José Martínez Millán (ed.), La Corte de Carlos V, 5 vols (Madrid, 2000); José Martínez Millán and Santiago Fernández Conti (eds), La Monarquía de Felipe II: la Casa del rey, 2 vols (Madrid, 2005); José Martínez Millán and Maria Antonietta Visceglia (eds), La Monarquía de Felipe III, 4 vols (Madrid, 2008), vols I-II; José Martínez Millán and José Eloy Hortal Muñoz (eds), La Corte de Felipe IV (1621-65). Reconfiguración de la Monarquía Católica, 3 vols (Madrid, 2015); and José Eloy Hortal Muñoz and Félix Labrador Arroyo (eds), La Casa de Borgoña. La Casa del rey de España (Louvain, 2014).

5 See José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, ‘La integración de los Sitios Reales en el sistema de Corte durante el reinado de Felipe IV’, Libros de la Corte 8 (2014), pp. 27-47.

6 Jeroen Duindam, ‘Rulers and Courts’, in Hamish Scott (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern European History, 1350–1750: Cultures and Power, 2 vols (Cambridge, 2015), vol. II, pp. 440-77; José Eloy Hortal Muñoz and Gijs Versteegen, Las ideas políticas y sociales en la Edad Moderna (Madrid, 2016), especially chapter 1.

7 The importance of the royal hunt is explored in Thomas T. Allsen, The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History (Philadelphia, 2006). More detail for the European kingdoms can be found at Claude d’Anthenaise and Monique Chatenet (eds), Chasses princières dans l’Europe de la Renaissance (Arles, 2007).

8 This role has recently been closely studied by PALATIUM, a Research Networking Programme directed by Krista de Jonge and financed by the European Science Foundation, which brought together scholars from different fields across Europe to promote transdisciplinary and transnational research. The name of the project was Court Residences as Places of Exchange in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (1400 –1700). The programme ran from 2010–15, and its numerous activities and publications can be consulted on its webpage: http://www.courtresidences.eu/index.php/home/.

9 Currently there is a great deal of academic debate about whether the court was the only place where innovation took place — an idea defended mainly by Martin Warnke in his book Hofkünstler: zur Vorgeschichte des modernen Künstlers (Cologne, 1985) — or whether important cities, their universities, and other centres of learning played a more important role in innovation, as argued by the European Research Council [ERC hereafter] ‘Projekt Artifex: Redefining Boundaries: Artistic training by the guilds in Central Europe up to the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire’, directed by Prof. Tacke at the University of Trier in Germany, with its latest results published in Dagmar Eichberger and Philippe Lorentz (eds), The Artist Between Court and City — L’artiste entre la cour et la ville — Der Künstler zwischen Hof und Stadt (1300–1600) (Petersberg, 2016).

10 There are a few notable exceptions, like the relevant Vincent Maroteaux, Versailles. Le Roi et son Domaine (Versailles, 2000).

11 José Manuel Barbeito, El Alcázar de Madrid (Madrid, 1992).

12 Jonathan Brown and John H. Elliott, A Palace for a King: Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV (New Haven, 1986).

13 Discussed by Jeroen Duindam, ‘El legado borgoñón en la vida cortesana de los Habsburgo austriacos’, in Krista De Jonge, Bernardo José García García and Alicia Esteban Estríngana (eds), El legado de Borgona. Fiesta y ceremonia cortesana en la Europa de los Austrias 1454–1648 (Madrid, 2010), pp. 35-58.

14 Numerous studies are being conducted in this field, for example, the ones developed through the ERC Starting Grant Project ‘The Jagiellonians: Dynasty, Identity and Memory in Central Europe’, directed by Natalia M. Nowakowska at the University of Oxford. For a broader approach, see Jeroen Duindam, Dynasties: A Global History of Power, 1300–1800 (New York, 2015); and Liesbeth Geevers and Mirella Marini (eds), Dynastic Identity in Early Modern Europe. Rulers, Aristocrats and the Formation of Identities (Farnham, 2015).

15 As studied by René Vermeir, Dries Raeymaekers and José Eloy Hortal Muñoz (eds), A Constellation of Courts. The Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555–1665 (Louvain, 2014), especially in the introduction and conclusion.

16 See for example Fernando Checa Cremades and José Miguel Morán Turina, Las Casas del Rey. Casas de Campo, Cazaderos y Jardines. Siglos XVI y XVII (Madrid, 1986); or José Luis Sancho Gaspar, La arquitectura de los Sitios Reales: catálogo histórico de los palacios, jardines y patronatos reales del Patrimonio Nacional (Madrid, 1995).

17 See the relevant chapters in Martínez Millán and Hortal Muñoz, La Corte de Felipe IV; or some of the works compiled in Concepción Camarero Bullón and Félix Labrador Arroyo (eds), La extensión de la corte: los Sitios Reales (Madrid, 2017).

18 The architectural features of royal sites in the Habsburg Netherlands have been meticulously studied in recent years by Krista de Jonge in the context of the Flemish territories, and by Konrad Ottenheym in the context of what we now call The Netherlands. They have jointly addressed these questions in their edited volume, Unity and Discontinuity. Architectural Relationships between the Southern and Northen Low Countries (1530–1700) (Turnhout, 2007). At the same time, studies are beginning to appear that address the political and cultural role of theses residences, although they focus mainly on the noble not royal ones, such as the work of Paul Janssens. A brief summary of key scholarship in this area is given in Dries Raeymaekers, ‘Een langverwachte inhaalbeweging. Recente studies over kastelen en buitenplaatsen in België’, Virtus. Journal of Nobility Studies 20 (2013), pp. 184-95.

19 Dagmar Eichberger, ‘A Cultural Centre in the Southern Netherlands: The Court of Archduchess Margaret of Austria (1480–1530) in Mechelen’, in Martin Gosman, Alasdair MacDonald and Arjo Vanderjagt (eds), Princes and Princely Culture, 1450–1650, 2 vols (Leiden and Boston, 2003), vol. I, pp. 239-58.

20 There are several studies that focus on Coudenberg, such as Pierre Santenoy, Les arts et les artistes à la Cour de Bruxelles, 3 vols (Brussels, 1932-34); Arlette Smolar-Meynart et al., Le palais de Bruxelles. Huit siècles d’art et d´histoire (Brussels, 1991); or Vincent Heymans, Laetitia Cnokaert and Frédérique Honoré (eds), Le palais du Coudenberg à Bruxelles. Du château médiéval au site archéologique (Brussels, 2014).

21 The impact of the court upon the city is currently receiving a great deal of scholarly attention, as evidenced by the special issue on Studies in European Urban History (1100–1800) 35 (2015), directed by Léonard Courbon and Denis Menjot, entitled La cour et la ville dans l’Europe du Moyen âge et des Temps Modernes. This issue includes an article about the impact of the court in Brussels, by Peter Stabel and Luc Duerloo, ‘Du réseau urbain à la ville capitale? La cour et la ville aux Pays-Bas du bas Moyen Âge aux temps modernes’, pp. 37-52. A few years before, Anne-Laure van Bruane, ‘The Habsburg Theatre State: Court, City and the Performance of Identity in the Early Modern Southern Low Countries’, in Robert Stein and Judith Pollmann (eds), Networks, Regions and Nations: Shaping Identities in the Low Countries, 1300–1650 (Leiden and Boston, 2009), pp. 131-49. John P. Spielman pioneered this field with The City and the Crown: Vienna and the Imperial Court 1600–1740 (West Lafayette, IN, 1993).

22 As Merlijn Hurx has argued in ‘Keeping in Control: The Modernisation of Architectural Planning by Northern European Courts in the Late Middle Ages’, in Birgitte Bøggild Johannsen and Konrad Ottenheym (eds), Beyond Scylla and Charybdis. European Courts and Court Residences outside Habsburg and Valois/Bourbon Territories (Copenhagen, 2015), pp. 293-307.

23 As examined in Krista de Jonge, ‘“t Hof van Brabant” als symbool van de Spaanse hofhouding in de Lage Landen’, Bulletin – Koninklijke Nederlandse oudheidkundige Bond [hereafter: KNOB] 98 (1999), pp. 183-97.

24 Further information and an updated bibliography can be found in José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, ‘La importancia de la articulación del territorio y la ocupación de los espacios de poder en los territorios flamencos durante la Revuelta de los Países Bajos: Ouvrages de la Cour y Tour de Rolle’, in Paloma Bravo and Juan Carlos D’Amico (eds), Territoires, lieux et espaces de la révolte. XIVe-XVIIIe siècles (Dijon, 2017), pp. 109-26.

25 Archives Génerales du Royaume, Brussels [hereafter AGR], Chambre des Comptes [hereafter CC], Registres 132, fol. 113r.

26 AGR, CC, Registres 133, fol. 10r.

27 AGR, CC, Registres 133, fol. 202r-v.

28 AGR, CC, Registres 134, fols 123 and ff.

29 A document is kept at the AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, no 13, fols 40v-41v, entitled Un formulaire ancien du serment du controlleur ou Maître des ouvres en Brabant, Translat de la langue Thioise ou flamande, which contains a great deal of information on the tasks that these individuals had to perform.

30 For contemporary studies of the royal chapel of Brussels from a spiritual and architectual point of view, see Jules Chifflet, Aula Sacra Principium Belgii; sive Commentarius Historicus de Capellae Regiae (Antwerp, 1650); and Antonius Sanderus, Status Aulicus, seu brevis designatio illustrium quarundam et magis eminentium personarum, quae in honoratioribus aulae Belgicae ministeriis fuere sub serenissimis et burgundica e austria familia principibus (Brussels, 1658).

31 Scholarship on this architect, and the role he played during the Felicíssimo Viaje, was revisited during the international conference Imperial Festivities in Hainaut, 1549. Festivals in Hainaut at the Time of Jacques Du Broeucq: The European Importance of Festivities to Honour Emperor Charles V and the Future Philip II (1549) in October 2015, during celebrations held at Mons as European Capital of Culture. The conference proceedings are going to be published in a volume edited by Margaret M. McGowan, Ronald Mulryne, Margaret Shewring, Marie-Claude Canova-Green and Krista De Jonge in the Festival Series, formerly published by Ashgate and currently by Routledge.

32 The victory of Mühlberg, and the coming into force of the Treaty of Crépy with France, allowed Charles V to redirect his focus of attention towards the Empire, where he was to convene the Diet of Augsburg in an attempt to put an end to religious conflict. Charles even tried to put his dynasty in order by way of a dynastic agreement with his brother Ferdinand, king of the Romans, with the aim of ensuring the rights of Prince Philip and consolidating the dynasty’s power in the Italian Peninsula, the Holy Roman Empire and the Habsburg Netherlands; that was the real aim of the famous Felicíssimo Viaje, that lasted from 1549 to 1551 (narrated by Juan Cristóbal Calvete de la Estrella, El felicíssimo viaje del muy alto y muy poderoso Príncipe don Phelippe, ed. Paloma Cuenca (Madrid, 2001).

33 For a study of this site in the sixteenth century, see Robert Wellens, ‘Le domaine de Mariemont au XVIe siècle, 1546–1598’, Annales du Cercle archéologique de Mons 64 (1958–61), pp. 79-172; and ‘L’inventaire de la Chapelle du Château de Mariemont en 1557’, Annales du Cercle Archéologique du Canton de Soignies 23 (1964), pp. 43-47.

34 Published in Jules Lameere, Charles Laurent and Henri Simont (eds), Recueil des ordonnances des Pays-Bas 1506–1700, 2^e sèrie, Règne de Charles-Quint (1506–1555), 6 vols (Brussels, 1893–1922), vol. I, pp. 239-54.

35 Copies of this document at AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, no 8, unfoliated, and no 13, fols 9r-23v.

36 See José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, Los asuntos de Flandes. Las relaciones entre las Cortes de la Monarquía Hispana y de los Países Bajos durante el siglo XVI (Saarbrücken, 2011), chapters 4-5.

37 AGR, Audience, no 33/1, 6 (memorandum at nos 5 and 7), n. d. (end of 1593).

38 A concept understood in the sense developed by Tamar Herzog, Defining Nations: Immigrants and Citizens in Early Modern Spain and Spanish America (New Haven, 2003).

39 Manuel Rivero Rodríguez, ‘Una monarquía de casas reales y cortes virreinales’, in Martínez Millán and Visceglia, La monarquía de Felipe III, vol. IV, pp. 31-60.

40 The work of Luc Duerloo and Werner Thomas, published in 1998 during the fourth centenary of the Cession, or the formal transfer of the Habsburg Netherlands to the Archdukes Albert and Isabella in full sovereignty in 1598, is still an essential reference for this topic: the catalogue of the exhibition Albert et Isabelle 1598–1621 (Brussels, 1998), and the collection of essays Albert & Isabella, 1598–1621. Essays (Turnhout, 1998).

41 As Annemie de Vos has shown in ‘Hof van Den Haag en hof van Brussel (1590–1630). Structurele organisatie van de bouwprojecten tijdens de regering van prins Maurits en van de aartshertogen Albrecht en Isabella’, Bulletin KNOB 5-6 (1999), pp. 198-213. De Jonge and Ottenheym, Unity and Discontinuity have studied how the southern and northern provinces of the Netherlands have always been studied separately, despite the fact that they have always had numerous points in common. Jan Brueghel the Younger's Palace of Coudenberg, ca. 1627, can viewed at the website of the Prado Museum, Madrid: https://www.museodelprado.es/imagen/alta_resolucion/P01451.jpg.

42 This occurred with the Coudenberg after the construction of a hydraulic machine at the begining of the seventeenth century, as examined in Michel Van Nimmen, ‘De la Cour a la Ville. Les eaux de la machine hydraulique de Bruxelles (1601–1858)’, in Bruxelles et la vie urbaine. Archives. Art. Histoire, Recueil dédié à Arlette Smolar-Meynart (1938–2000), special issue of Archives et Bibliothèques de Belgique 64 (2001), pp. 304-39; or Chloé Deligne, ‘L’eau dans les jardins du palais du Coudenberg à Bruxelles. Innovation technologique et dynamiques urbaines (1600–1850)’, in Histoire urbaine 14 (2005/3), pp. 131-48. For studies on other royal sites, see Krista de Jonge, ‘Les grands jardins princiers des anciens Pays-Bas: Bruxelles et Mariemont aux XVI et XVII siècles’, in Laurence Baudoux-Rousseau and Charles Giry-Deloison (eds), Le jardin dans les anciens Pays-Bas (Arras, 2002), pp. 29-41; and Théophile Lejeune, ‘Le parc et les jardins de la maison de plaisance de Mariemont sous les Archiducs Albert et Isabelle (1598–1600)’, Annales du cercle archéologique de Mons 16 (1880), pp. 534-40.

43 AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, papers of J.B. Aimé, nos 388 and 396.

44 About this royal site during the period of the Archdukes, Joëlle Demeester, ‘Le domaine de Mariemont sous Albert et Isabelle (1598–1621)’, Annales du Cercle archéologique de Mons 71 (1981), pp. 181-282. In this article, it is possible to find the different sources related to the appointments of Denis de la Forge and the different châtelains of this royal site.

45 Policy fully explained at José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, ‘La unión de la Corte, la Casa y el territorio en la Monarquía Hispana de los siglos XVI y XVII: las guardas reales y los Sitios Reales’, Revista Escuela de Historia 16-1 (2017).

46 About the various corps of royal guards of the Spanish Habsburg kings, José Eloy Hortal Muñoz, Las guardas reales de los Austrias hispanos (Madrid, 2013). In this case, pp. 224-25.

47 In addition to the research mentioned in the previous footnote, see Hortal Muñoz, ‘La importancia de la articulación del territorio’. The Tour de Rolle of 1534 is kept at the AGR, Audience, reg. 33/1, no 15.

48 Copies at the AGR, Audience, reg. 33/1, no 14; and Archivo General de Simancas, Valladolid [hereafter AGS], Secretarías Provinciales [hereafter SP], legajo 2539, unfoliated.

49 Copies at AGR, Audience, reg. 33/1, no 16; AGS, SP, legajo 2539, unfoliated; and Archivo General del Palacio Real, Madrid, Sección Histórica, caja 170.

50 Copies at AGR, Audience, reg. 33/1, no. 17; and AGS, SP, legajo 2539, unfoliated.

51 AGR, Audience, reg. 33/1, unfoliated.

52 For a detailed study of the royal household of the Archdukes, see Dries Raeymaekers, One Foot in the Palace. The Habsburg Court of Brussels and the Politics of Access in the Reign of Albert and Isabella, 1598–1621 (Louvain, 2013).

53 AGR, Audience, reg. 33/4, fol. 67v.

54 See Armand de Behault de Dornon, ‘Le Château de Vilvorde, la Maison de Correction et leurs prisonniers célèbres’, Annales de l’Académie Royal d’Archéologie de Belgique 69 (1922), pp. 67-108, and pp. 236-346.

55 Information about his different posts at AGS, Estado, legajos 1746, 1758 and 1775, unfoliated; and SP, libro 1444, fol. 31.

56 Een stad en een geslacht: Edingen en Arenberg (Brussels, 1994), p. 58.

57 Sander Pierron, Histoire illustrée de la forêt de Soignies, 3 vols (Brussels, 1935–38).

58 For a detailed study of the royal hunt under the reign of the Archdukes, see Luc Duerloo, ‘The Hunt in the Performance of Archducal Rule: Endurance and Revival in the Habsburg Netherlands in the Early Seventeenth Century’, Renaissance Quarterly 69 (2016), pp. 116–54.

59 Arnout Balis, Krista de Jonge, Guy Delmarcel and Amaury Lefebure, Les chasses de Maximilien (Paris, 1993).

60 Luc Duerloo and Marc Wingens, Scherpenheuvel: het Jeruzalem van de Lage Landen (Louvain, 2002).

61 Cordula van Wyhe, ‘Piety and Politics in the Royal Convent of Discalced Carmelite Nuns in Brussels, 1607–1646’, Revue d'histoire ecclésiastique 100 (2005), pp. 457-87.

62 Joris Snaet, ‘Isabel Clara Eugenia and the Capuchin Monastery at Tervuren’, in Cordula van Wyhe (ed.), Isabel Clara Eugenia: Female Sovereignty in the. Courts of Madrid and Brussels (London, 2011), pp. 358-81.

63 Luc Duerloo, ‘Pietas Albertina. Dynastieke vroomheid en herbouw van het vorstelijk gezag’, BMGN-Low Countries Historical Review 112 (1997), pp. 1-18.

64 J. Demeester has examined this aspect in depth in ‘Le domaine de Mariemont sous Albert et Isabelle (1598–1621)’. See also Robert Wellens, ‘Deux documents relatifs à l’agrandissement du domaine de Mariemont sous les archiducs Albert et Isabelle’, Annales du cercle archéologique du canton de Soignies 23 (1964), pp. 57–70.

65 There are numerous scholars currently working in this field, such as those involved in the ERC Starting Grant Project ‘Elevated Minds: The Sublime in the Public Arts in 17th-century Paris and Amsterdam’, directed by Stijn Bussels at the University of Leiden.

66 See for example Roy Strong, Art and Power: Renaissance Festivals, 1450–1650 (Berkeley, 1973).

67 For the case of the Spanish monarchy, see Fernando Checa Cremades, ‘Monarchic Liturgies and the “Hidden King”: The Function and Meaning of Spanish Royal Portraiture in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, in Allan Ellenius (ed.), Iconography, Propaganda and Legitimation (Oxford, 1998), pp. 89-104.

68 Charles Terlinden, ‘Notes et documents relatifs a la galerie de tableaux conservée au château de Tervuren au XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles’, Annales de l’Académie royale d’archéologie de Belgique, 6^th series 10 (1922), pp. 180-98, and 347-406.

69 L. Everaert, ‘De warande van Tervueren’, De Horen 2 (1975), no 8, pp. 195-204; and ‘De ijskelder in de warande van Tervueren’, De Horen 11 (1984), no 6, pp. 214-20.

70 About these relevant visits, see the various works by Vic Motte, ‘Een gifmengster te Tervuren’, De Horen 16 (1989), no 4, pp. 126-35 (about Olympia Mancinís visit); or ‘Christina van Zweden en Tervuren’, De Horen 30 (2003), no 3, pp. 96-100.

71 AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, papers of J.B. Aimé, nos 388 and 396.

72 Ibid.

73 The Instruction au fait des ouvrages et Batiments de la Cour du 17 mars 1607, with the appointment of Ayala, at AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, no 6, unfoliated.

74 María Victoria García Morales, ‘El superintendente de obras reales en el siglo XVII’, Reales Sitios 104 (1990), pp. 65-74.

75 AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, no 6, unfoliated.

76 This topic has been studied in depth by Krista de Jonge, ‘Building Policy and Urbanisation during the Reign of the Archdukes: The Court and its Architects’, in Duerloo and Thomas, Essays, pp. 191-219.

77 Copies of all these instructions at AGR, Ouvrages de la Cour, no 8, unfoliated and papers of J. B. Aimé, no 371.

78 There is a wide range of research on the history of art under the Archdukes. For a bibliographical review see Alejandro Vergara (ed.), El Arte en la Corte de los Archiduques Alberto de Austria e Isabel Clara Eugenia (1598–1633). Un Reino Imaginado, Exhibition Catalogue (Madrid, 1999).

79 Peter Paul Rubens's and Jan Brueghel the Elder's Portrait of Albert, Archduke of Austria, with Tervueren castle in the background, 1615-1625, can be found at the website of the Prado Museum, Madrid: https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/el-archiduque-alberto-de-austria/36dba607-3137-455f-9d0d-2b7d3b3a1c1b.

80 This was an attempt by Teniers to be portrayed as noble, as explained in Faith Paulette Dreher, ‘The Artist as Seigneur: Châteaux and their Proprietors in the Work of David Teniers II’, The Art Bulletin 60 (1978), pp. 682-703. Jan Brueghel the Elder's The Archdukes hunting at Tervueren, ca. 1611, can be found at the website of the Prado Museum, Madrid: https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/los-archiduques-de-caza/c18257dc-40cd-40e7-b08a-168ae3c484a4.

81 Denijs van Alsloot's Winter landscape with a view of the château of Tervueren, 1614, can be viewed at the website of the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Brussels: https://www.fine-arts-museum.be/fr/la-collection/denijs-van-alsloot-paysage-dhiver-avec-vue-du-chateau-de-tervuren.

82 Jan Brueghel the Elder's Hearing, ca. 1619, can be viewed at the website of the Prado Museum, Madrid: https://www.museodelprado.es/coleccion/obra-de-arte/el-oido/074adedf-40f0-476f-b132-fe450e71e0f3.

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Notes on contributors

Jose Eloy Hortal Muñoz

José Eloy Hortal Muñoz has been professor of Early Modern History at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid (URJC) since 2009. His major works included the monographs Las ideas políticas y sociales en la Edad Moderna (2016), with Gijs Versteegen; Las guardas reales de los Austrias hispanos (Madrid, 2013); and Los asuntos de Flandes. Las relaciones entre las Cortes de la Monarquía Hispánica y de los Países Bajos durante el siglo XVI (Saarbrücken, 2011); and the co-direction of several collective works: La Corte de Felipe IV (1621–1665). Reconfiguración de la Monarquía Católica (Madrid, 2015), with José Martínez Millán; A Constellation of Courts. The Households of Habsburg Europe, 1555–1665 (Louvain, 2014), with René Vermeir and Dries Raeymaekers; and La Casa de Borgoña: la Casa del rey de España (Louvain, 2014), with Félix Labrador Arroyo. This work was supported by MINECO/FEDER, research project “Del Patrimonio Dinástico al Patrimonio Nacional: los Sitios Reales” [HAR2015-68946-C3-3-P] and CAM, research project “La herencia de los Reales Sitios: Madrid, de corte a capital (historia, patrimonio y turismo)” [S2015/HUM-3415].