Court and Image: The Spanish Monarchy through Portraiture (Spanish version) is a work born of a methodological conviction: the court portrait is not merely art, but a language of state. In this book, I offer a journey through the use of portraiture as a political, symbolic, and diplomatic tool in seventeenth-century Europe, with particular attention to its role in projecting power and dynastic legitimacy.

Through documented episodes and visual analysis, I examine how the Spanish Monarchy orchestrated a network of royal images that linked Madrid, Vienna, Paris, London, and Brussels. From miniatures exchanged in marriage negotiations to official portraits that crossed borders as gestures of reconciliation or dynastic affirmation, portraiture emerges as a representational device that forged alliances, narrated genealogies, and sustained the image of a monarchy painted to govern.

The work highlights key figures such as Velázquez, Rubens, and Van Dyck, whose brushstrokes not only shaped faces but also crafted narratives of power. Visual analysis is interwoven with diplomatic history and courtly culture, proposing that the royal image is also archive, testimony, and strategy.

This book is intended for art historians, scholars of diplomacy, and readers passionate about the visual culture of early modern Europe. In its pages, history is portrayed, preserved, and transmitted.

**This entry forms part of my editorial series Art and Power, focused on visual culture, dynastic representation, and pictorial diplomacy. The full technical record is available in the Books section.**