The young queen, who had recently recovered from the birth of her first child with King Philip IV, gazes out with a somber, almost inscrutable expression, somewhat at odds with the spirited ...

Beside Mari-Bárbola is the Italian midget Nicolasito Pertusato, who is waking up, or teasing, the dozing mastiff. In the shadows behind Doña Isabel stands a court lady, Marcella de Ulloa, in a nun’s ...

Philip IV was in trouble. Spain’s far-flung empire, arguably the world’s most powerful, had seriously wobbled in the 1640s — and so had the king’s family life. When the bloody Thirty Years ...