As the first comprehensive volume devoted entirely to women of both the Spanish and Austrian Habsburg royal dynasties spanning the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, this interdisciplinary collection illuminates their complex and often contradictory political functions and their interrelations across early modern national borders. The essays in this volume investigate the lives of six Habsburg women who, as queens consort and queen regent, duchesses, a vicereine, and a nun, left an indelible mark on the diplomatic and cultural map of early modern Europe. Contributors examine the national and transnational impact of these notable women through their biographies, and explore how they transferred their cultural, religious, and political traditions as the women moved from one court to another. Early Modern Habsburg Women investigates the complex lives of Philip II’s daughter, the Infanta Catalina Micaela (1567-1597); her daughter, Margherita of Savoy, Vicereine of Portugal (1589-1655); and Maria Maddalena of Austria, Grand Duchess of Florence (1589-1631). The second generation of Habsburg women that the volume addresses includes Philip IV’s first wife, Isabel of Borbón (1602-1644), who became a Habsburg by marriage; Rudolph II’s daughter, Sor Ana Dorotea (1611-1694), the only Habsburg nun in the collection; and Philip IV’s second wife, Mariana of Austria (1634-1696), queen regent and mother to the last Spanish Habsburg. Through archival documents, pictorial and historical accounts, literature, and correspondence, as well as cultural artifacts such as paintings, jewelry, and garments, this volume brings to light the impact of Habsburg women in the broader historical, political, and cultural contexts. The essays fill a scholarly need by covering various phases of the lives of early modern royal women, who often struggled to sustain their family loyalty while at the service of a foreign court, even when protecting and preparing their heirs for rule a

When Philip IV of Spain died in 1665, his heir, Carlos II, was three years old. In addition to this looming dynastic crisis, decades of enormous military commitments had left Spain a virtually bankrupt state with vulnerable frontiers and a depleted army. In Silvia Z. Mitchell’s revisionist account, Queen, Mother, and Stateswoman, Queen Regent Mariana of Austria emerges as a towering figure at court and on the international stage, while her key collaborators—the secretaries, ministers, and diplomats who have previously been ignored or undervalued—take their rightful place in history. Mitchell provides a nuanced account of Mariana of Austria’s ten-year regency (1665–75) of the global Spanish Empire and examines her subsequent role as queen mother. Drawing from previously unmined primary sources, including Council of State deliberations, diplomatic correspondence, Mariana’s and Carlos’s letters, royal household papers, manuscripts, and legal documents, Mitchell describes how, over the course of her regency, Mariana led the monarchy out of danger and helped redefine the military and diplomatic blocs of Europe in Spain’s favor. She follows Mariana’s exile from court and recounts how the dowager queen used her extensive connections and diplomatic experience to move the negotiations for her son’s marriage forward, effectively exploiting the process to regain her position. A new narrative of the Spanish Habsburg monarchy in the later seventeenth century, this volume advances our knowledge of women’s legitimate political entitlement in the early modern period. It will be welcomed by scholars and students of queenship, women’s studies, and early modern Spain.

1. The book is the first devoted to the topic of women artists across the courts of early modern Europe. 2. The essays consider women artists and their experiences in a variety of European courts, in Italy, Flanders, Spain, and England. 3. The essays included address a variety of forms of artistic production by women in the courts, including large and small-scale paintings, sculpture, prints, and textiles.

In Spain, the two hundred years that elapsed between the beginning of the early modern period and the final years of the Habsburg Empire saw a profusion of works written by women. Whether secular or religious, noble or middle class, early modern Spanish women actively composed creative works such as poetry, prose narratives, and plays. The Routledge Research Companion to Early Modern Spanish Women Writers covers the broad array of different kinds of writings – literary as well as extra-literary – that these women wrote, taking into consideration their subject positions and the cultural and historical contexts that influenced and were influenced by them. Beyond merely recognizing the individual women authors who had influence in literary, religious, and intellectual circles, this Research Companion investigates their participation in these circles through their writings, as well as the ways in which their texts informed Spain’s cultural production during the early modern period. In order to contextualize women’s writings across the historical and cultural spectrum of early modern Spain, the Research Companion is divided into six sections of general thematic interest: Women’s Worlds; Conventual Spaces; Secular Literature; Women in the Public Sphere; Private Circles; Women Travelers. Each section is subdivided into chapters that focus on specific issues or topics.

"Explores the intersections between monarchy, gender, and art through an investigation of the visual and architectural culture of the eighteenth-century Habsburg empress Maria Theresa"--Provided by publisher.

Combining historical, historiographical, museological, and touristic analysis, this study investigates how late medieval and early modern women of the Low Countries expressed themselves through texts, art, architecture and material objects, how they were represented by contemporaries, and how they have been interpreted in modern academic and popular contexts. Broomhall and Spinks analyse late medieval and early modern women's opportunities to narrate their experiences and ideas, as well as the processes that have shaped their representation in the heritage and cultural tourism of the Netherlands and Belgium today. The authors study female-authored objects such as familial and political letters, dolls' houses, account books; visual sources, funeral monuments, and buildings commissioned by female patrons; and further artworks as well as heritage sites, streetscapes, souvenirs and clothing with gendered historical resonances. Employing an innovative range of materials from written sources to artworks, material objects, heritage sites and urban precincts, the authors argue that interpretations of late medieval and early modern women's experiences by historians and art scholars interact with presentations by cultural and heritage tourism providers in significant ways that deserve closer interrogation by feminist researchers.

The Politics of Female Households is the first collection that seeks to integrate ladies-in-waiting into the master narrative of early modern court studies. Presenting evidence and analysis of the multifarious ways in which ‘women above stairs’ shaped the European courts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it argues for a re-assessment of their political influence. The cultural agency of ladies-in-waiting is viewed in the reflection of portraiture, pamphlets and masques: their political dealings and patronage are revealed through analysis of letters, family networks, career patterns, gift exchange and household structures, as well as their activities in the fields of intelligence-gathering and espionage. By concentrating on a previously neglected area of female agency, this collection demonstrates clearly that the political climate of Europe was often shaped outside the male-dominated institutions of government and administration. Contributors include: Helen Graham-Matheson, Hannah Leah Crummé, Katrin Keller, Vanessa de Cruz, Birgit Houben, Dries Raeymaekers, Janet Ravenscroft, Una McIlvenna, Rosalind K. Marshall, Oliver Mallick, Cynthia Fry, Nadine Akkerman, Sara J. Wolfson, Fabian Persson, and Jeroen Duindam.