The New World in the Old? The absence of empire in early modern Madrid¹

James S. Amelang
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

ABSTRACT
This article explores the question of the presence -or, to be more precise, the invisibility- of empire in the buildings, streets, and other spaces and loci of public display in the center of the early modern Spanish empire, the capital city of Madrid. It reviews some of the relatively few physical traces of the overseas colonies, particularly within semi-private venues such as royal and aristocratic collections of americana. It then goes on to suggest that the greatest presence of the New World in the Old was linked to the growing consumption of recognizably American goods within the domestic or private sphere. In the end, the degree of publicity -and the hierarchy of status contemporaries associated with European (especially Italian) as opposed to non-European cultural products- seems to have been the key variable affecting the display of colonial ties and possessions. The study closes by inviting further research along these and related lines.

KEYWORDS: Madrid; Cultural imports from the America; Private places; Material culture

RESUMEN
Este artículo explora la cuestión de la presencia -o, mejor dicho, la invisibilidad- del imperio en los edificios, las calles y otros espacios y lugares públicos en el mismo centro de la monarquía imperial de la España moderna, la ciudad capital de Madrid. Sigue las huellas de algunas de las relativamente pocas trazas de las colonias de ultramar, en particular las que se encontraron en los contextos semi-privados de las colecciones reales y nobiliarias. A continuación plantea que la mayor presencia del Nuevo Mundo en el Viejo se vinculaba con el cada vez mayor consumo de productos reconocidos como americanos dentro de la esfera doméstica o privada. Al fin y al cabo, el grado de publicidad -y la jerarquía de status asociado con el origen europeo (especialmente italiano) o no europeo de los productos culturales- resultó ser la variable clave que afectaba la exhibición de los vínculos y bienes coloniales. El artículo se cierra con una invitación a una investigación más amplia y detenida de estas cuestiones.

PALABRAS CLAVE: Madrid; Productos culturales americanos; Espacios privados; Cultura material

Writing in 1610, the Scottish Lord Roos reported to his great-uncle Robert Cecil back in England on his travels in Spain. While Barcelona and Zaragoza impressed him favorably, his opinion of Madrid was far less charitable. In his eyes, the city's makeshift construction and disordered architecture rendered it a mere "tent for the Court". Some sixty years later, however, his French counterpart Jouvin de Rochefort, who published his eightvolume Voyageur d'Europe in Paris beginning in 1672, spoke highly not only of Spain, but also of its capital city. Madrid, he wrote, was a grand place. Why? Because it "can be called the capital of the world with more reason than pagan Rome because the rarities of the Indies can be seen there"².
This latter sentence is especially intriguing. There was, as the author knew well, nothing new in bringing together the notion of the center of the world with the display of objects of distant origins. This had long been a topos associated with ancient Rome, which consciously affirmed its status as caput mundi through the absorption and exhibition of the widest possible range of rarities, which were moreover made visible throughout the urban landscape. Yet early modern Madrid's claiming the same role would surely have struck many contemporary observers as more an exercise in rhetoric than in reality. No one would have doubted that Madrid was the capital city of the largest empire in the western world, if not the entire globe. However, that it was the center of a vast transatlantic system of cultural as well as political and economic transfers, and that these acquisitions played a significant part in shaping the city's image, was far less evident. For at first sight, the visual dimension of colonialism was conspicuous by its absence. In terms of public display, Spain's overseas empire was pretty much invisible.
To be crystal clear: I am not arguing that America was unimportant to and in early modern Madrid. I am suggesting in fact that despite its importance, America was largely invisible in the imperial capital, and continued to be so as long as Madrid held onto that role. This hypothesis has its origins in a line of argument that started in 1970 with John Elliott's The Old World and the New. This work questioned the facile assumption -which dated from the sixteenth century itself- that the "discovery" of the New World had an immediate and profound impact on the Old³. While The Old World and the New took European culture as a whole as its purview, my much more modest effort focuses on a specific urban context, that of Madrid. Moreover, while Elliott took care to circumscribe his observations to the initial contact period, my application takes his thesis further on into the future.
I also hasten to add at the beginning that there was nothing unusual in Madrid's neglect or refusal of representation of empire. In terms of the symbols and references of their architecture and public art, most European capitals did not become explicitly imperial capitals until the nineteenth century -precisely when Madrid began to lose this status. Early modern Madrid was in this regard quite similar to London or Paris (or Istambul, for that matter). None of these cities displayed their farflung possessions. If anything, remains and reminders of overseas colonies were far more likely to be found in other, non-capital metropolitan urban centers. In the case of Spain this meant the great commercial emporia of Lisbon -part of the Spanish Monarchy from 1580 to 1640- and above all Seville. There empire, ranging from the physical presence of its inhabitants to the many direct and indirect signs and symbols of their existence, was much more likely to be in evidence. Yet even in such centers it took some time for local art and architecture to reflect New World connections. Renaissance Seville was in fact largely devoid of overseas references, with the lone exception of Alejo Fernández's painting known as the "Virgin of the Navigators" in the chapel of the Casa de Contratación, the royal agency overseeing official matters relating to the Americas. It would take at least another generation before americana began to make a public mark on the city itself, through botanical gardens, collections of exotica, and the like⁴.
This brief and quite tentative essay -which is just a preliminary sounding within a longer-term project on how people viewed and wrote about cities in the early modern era- will develop and then partly disassemble the apparent paradox of the invisibility of empire in a city that could not have existed without it. To that end eight points will be made, beginning with the most obvious:

1. Madrid as a city absorbed much from elsewhere. This included, first and foremost, its inhabitants. After king Philip II moved his court to Madrid in 1561, tens of thousands of migrants flocked to the new capital, mostly from the villages, towns, and other cities of central Castile⁵. Madrid similarly recruited its elites, both bureaucratic and commercial, from outside⁶. This long-term dependence on external sources of what is now called human capital became the centerpiece of Madrid's double-edged reputation. On the one hand, for centuries Madrid has been excoriated as a symbol of demographic as well as economic parasitism. Its rivals, usually green with envy, snidely dismiss its having become a great city thanks not to its own efforts, but to the stroke of a monarch's pen. On the other hand, it won praise -at least at first, as will be seen- as a uniquely open, even cosmopolitan city. It was hardly an accident that one of the earliest eulogies of Madrid written after its elevation to the status of capital -its author was, significantly, a northern humanist named Hendrik Cock- portrays it as a city inhabited by a wide range of foreigners. These ranged from Flemish merchants selling paintings, to French menial workers, greedy Genoese bankers there to steal Spanish silver, and even African slaves⁷. Notice, though, the lack of mention in this list of Americans, understood in the broad sense of the term. That Madrid was an open city which attracted many outsiders cannot be questioned. What can be doubted is whether the city's openness and cosmopolitan character wound up embracing its transatlantic subjects.

2. Early modern Madrid apparently housed few Americans, and they left even fewer signs of their presence. This is a pretty bold statement, given the parlous state of our familiarity with much of the city's past. While the study of early modern Madrid has quickened as of late, the social and cultural history of this metropolis has lagged far behind other aspects. Hence much of what I will have to say about the question of international cultural transfers and influences and the traces they leave behind will be very speculative, and should be taken with more than a grain of salt.
Our ignorance is compounded when we reach the American dimension. To begin with, to my knowledge there is not a single study of the physical presence in Madrid of Americans, creoles, mestizos, or Amerindians. There surely must have been some of each category, but in the grand census of historiography, they have yet to be registered⁸.
The sense of invisibility deepens when one ponders the lack of reference to the New World in the sphere of culture that counted most in early modern Spain, that is, religion. Among all the chapels and altars in the many churches of early modern Madrid, I know of only one of American origin. In the Carmen Calzado, or Carmelite monastery near the city center in the Puerta del Sol, one can find among several Virgins a statue of Our Lady of Guadalupe. According to a nearby sign, it is there because the chapel which housed it was finished in the mid-seventeenth century thanks to the money sent for this purpose by one Fray Ambrosio Vallejo, a native Spaniard who had served as bishop of Popayán in Colombia. Vallejo was buried in the main chapel, and following his death the Council of the Indies took over his patronage of this central space in the church⁹. As for confraternities, of the over 600 such brotherhoods that have been documented as founded in early modern Madrid, there was only one organized by Americans. This was the congregation of Our Lady of Guadalupe, founded in the Augustinian monastery of San Felipe el Real at the relatively late date of 1743¹⁰. Altogether, one gets the impression that the only group linked to the New World capable, thanks to its sizeable presence and resources, of leaving a perceptible mark on the spiritual landscape of Madrid, was the network of Portuguese merchants of largely converted Jewish origins who were responsible for integrating the Spanish imperial economy into the larger transatlantic exchanges of seventeenth-century Europe¹¹. At least one religious landmark was identified with this group, the hermitage of San Antonio -popularly known "of the Portuguese"- built in 1635 in the park of Madrid's second royal dwelling, the Buen Retiro palace¹². Apart from this site -and it must be stressed that it was associated only very indirectly with the New World- it is hard to think of any other "American" space within the capital city.

3. There were nevertheless limits to invisibility, and most of them centered around the court. So much for public space. Here we can step backward, and inquire after other venues in which American references could be found. Exotic objects could be found in Madrid, and the key locations housing them were palaces, royal and otherwise.
First and foremost was the court. While it centered physically on the old royal palace known as the Alcázar, a number of other dwellings, most of them within a day's distance in an arc surrounding the city, intermittently housed the king and his family and retainers. The most famous of these supplementary foci was Philip II's palace in El Escorial, built from 1563 to 1584. Another major residence appeared in the 1630s, the Buen Retiro mentioned above. Like most courts, the central place of the Spanish Monarchy attracted not just politicians and other hangers-on, but also intellectuals and artists from throughout its territories, and above all from Italy and the Low Countries. As one might expect, these and other learned visitors to the court often provide the most revealing testimony regarding the visibility of cultural objects and practices within it.
The New World made itself known to these reporters in two ways: through collections of items relating to its inhabitants, and by means of decorative schemes which evoked the world overseas. One testimony to the former comes from the pen of the Levant merchant Robert Bargrave, who visited Madrid in 1655. Like many others, he was impressed less by the city itself than by Philip II's palace at the Escorial, the "famous Prodigy of Spaine"¹³. There he visited the library, and remarked on the manuscripts and books of exotic origin he was shown, which included a Persian Quran and several books from India. At the royal armory at the Alcázar, he moreover saw Turkish spoils from Lepanto, Chinese armor, and the like¹⁴. Shortly thereafter, Jean Muret, temporarily attached to the French embassy in Madrid, similarly recorded the artifacts from overseas he saw in a building next to the Buen Retiro palace. The americana among them ranged from tapestries made from tree bark and the ceremonial clothing Moctezuma and the last Incas wore, to obsidian mirrors and bed curtains made from feathers¹⁵. Not surprisingly, other visitors to the city wrote similar accounts of the unusual objects that graced the royal residences, and which were open to inspection to a privileged few.
What Bargrave and Muret saw was merely a tip of the most formidable iceberg of exotica in early modern Europe. Throughout the continent, royal collections provided the most important means of housing and displaying overseas exotica; and Spaniards played the earliest and leading role in conveying and displaying americana in particular¹⁶. While the actual gathering of art and objects from the New World began with Columbus' first voyage, the exhibition of exotica did not take off until the arrival of the gifts Hernán Cortés shipped from Veracruz to Charles V in 1519¹⁷. The newly-crowned emperor immediately displayed the Mexican treasures and trophies in Toledo and Valladolid, and later in the Low Countries. An often-cited passage in Albrecht Dürer's travel diary recorded the deep impression these "wonderful works of art" produced by the "subtle ingenuity of men in foreign lands" made on him when he saw them during a visit to Brussels in 1520¹⁸.
Travel accounts also provide valuable testimony to the other way americana made itself noticeable in the early modern court: the representation of overseas possessions as part of the decoration of royal residences. For example, when the Leipzig merchant Jakob Cuelbis visited the Alcázar in 1599, he recorded in his notebook the iconographic program of its Great Hall, which included a large plan of "Mexico City in the Indies" and two paintings from "the island of China"¹⁹. The same building was also graced with maps and other painted and graphic views of New World locations, which were hung especially in the outlying annex known as the Pasadizo de la Encarnación²⁰. Portions of the Escorial similarly featured decorative schemes evoking the overseas empire. In fact, it housed what was arguably the most American space in the vicinity of Madrid: the room in the royal apartments that Philip II had decorated with drawings of fauna and flora from Francisco Hernández's expedition to Yucatán in the 1570s²¹.
The same sort of references were replicated in the rest of the city, albeit to a more limited extent. Cultural artifacts from the New World and beyond, including Asia, could also be found in a second space: within aristocratic and other more private collections scattered throughout Madrid²². Once again, travel accounts come to the rescue of the beleaguered historian in search of documentation of early modern interiors. The Italian antiquarian Cassiano dal Pozzo left a detailed record of his 1626 visit to Madrid in the company of the papal legate Cardinal Francesco Barberini. His diary lists and describes many of the venues in which one could come into contact with representations and materials of the New World. These included, first of all, Americans themselves, such as the passing-by archbishop of Mexico City, who said the Te Deum at Barberini's official entry. Then came the many convents and monasteries the papal party visited. In one of the most imposing of these centers, the suggestively-named Imperial College of the Jesuits, students put on a play for Cassiano and the others in a "room with hangings from India", placed there to disguise the elaborate stage machinery in use. The visitors were even more assiduous in their frequenting of noble places. Thus, after visiting the house of the Borja family, Cassiano noted in his diary that the many pieces of americana on display there had been brought back by the head of the family, D. Francisco de Borja y Aragón, who had recently served as the viceroy of Peru. The Italians also came into contact with other visual items and texts related to the Americas. At one point they were introduced to Fr. Gregorio de Bolívar, an Observant Minor friar, who had spent some thirty years in the Indies. Bolívar was the author of a highly detailed map and description of the New World which he had given to the royal favorite the count-duke of Olivares, and he promised Barberini a copy as well. Finally, the same day, they visited a small botanical garden belonging to the apothecary Diego de Cortavilla y Senabria, "which had diverse curious Indian plants". After giving the Cardinal some seeds and fruits, Cortavilla presented him with a "little book of diverse Indian simples [botanical remedies] with drawings and [details of] their curative virtues"²³.
This text registers in a nutshell many if not most of the major forms of New World exotica and the contexts in which they could be seen. The key thing for our interests is that the latter -all venues controlled by the king or his better-off subjects- were without exception private or semi-private in character. Once again, Spanish practice in this regard did not differ from that which prevailed in other European countries. The early penchant for public display of overseas curiosities such as the Cortés booty was followed by their retreat into the more secluded space of the Kunst- or Wunderkammer²⁴. These successors to the princely treasuries of the Middle Ages (and near ancestors of modern museums) were soon joined by a host of other collections, created and maintained by aristocrats, scientists, physicians, and others interested in acquiring, classifying, studying, and enjoying the contemplation of the wonders both of nature and of human creativity. They proved to be important conduits for early representations of the world outside Europe, knowledge of which was increasing thanks to other forms of dissemination, especially printed images, maps, and texts.
As one might expect, the richness and variety of the American holdings in Brussels, Florence, Vienna, Ambras, Prague, and Munich, impressive as they were, did not outshine what could be found in Spain itself²⁵. After all, all these centers depended on their privileged (and usually dynastic) contacts with Iberia for their supplies²⁶. Nor could one argue that the holdings outside Spain were substantially more famous. With the exception of the collection Margaret of Austria started to put together in the Low Countries beginning around 1500, all of these assemblages took shape in the second half of the sixteenth century. No ruler at that time -not even the arch-eccentric Rudolf II- could outdo Philip II as a collector, in terms both of the breadth and the depth of what he gathered²⁷. It is to Philip, or rather, to the logic that guided the choices made by Philip and others when assembling and displaying their collections, that one must turn when searching for the roots of Madrid's reluctance to display empire. For when all is said and done, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that Mesoamerican and Andean art and objects represented only a tiny portion of the contents of royal and aristocratic collections in Madrid. Meanwhile, references to the Asian and American realms of the empire within the iconography of local palaces were similarly scant. Their minimal presence in decorative schemes that strongly emphasized the cities and territories which belonged to the Monarchy is an eloquent form of silence.
In 1572, D. Francisco de Toledo, then the Spanish viceroy in Peru, urged the king to create a museum of americana in the royal palace²⁸. The list of American objects in Philip's possession at the time of his death in 1598 shows that enough material was available for a collection of this sort, without having to look any further²⁹. That no such museum, nor anything like it, was created reflects either indifference or inhibition on the part of the crown. Or perhaps something else.

4. The relative insignificance of cultural imports from the Americas, Philippines, and Asia contrasted sharply with the high degree of visibility of imports from the European domains of the Spanish Empire. The determining factor here seems to have been what could be called cultural status. Not surprisingly, the density of cultural exchanges closely mirrored the scale of prestige. Cultural contact was especially intense with three domains: Italy, the Low Countries, and (more obliquely) the Holy Roman Empire in central Europe. These were all territories either linked to or under the direct rule of Spain and the other Germanic half of the Habsburg dynasty. Cultural interchange with less friendly nations seems to have been more sporadic and less intense. This certainly was the case with France, at least until the mid-seventeenth century, and of England and the Dutch Republic as well.
Such Euro-imperial influences were visible in many spheres. Once again, the most important of these, although not the only one, was the most dynamic cultural arena in the city, the court. And the most deliberate efforts at sponsorship of international cultural transfers were found in the field of art. The kings of Spain and their court nobility were the wealthiest, most ambitious, and best informed art collectors in early modern Europe outside Rome³⁰. This was particularly true during the reigns of Philip II and his grandson Philip IV, which covered most of the long century from the 1560s to the 1660s. Their unflagging collecting and patronage made Madrid and nearby satellites such as the Escorial the leading European center -once again, after Rome- of artistic consumption. (Artistic production was another matter. It continued to be led by Italy and the southern Netherlands until the seventeenth century, when rival centers appeared first in Holland and then in France). Hyper-activity of this sort at the court had many consequences for Madrid as a city. One particularly important spinoff of lavish royal and aristocratic expenditure on foreign paintings and sculpture was the development of a lively local (and often second-hand) market for art. As in the court, foreign art -and Flemish and especially Italian painting in particular- was the sort most highly valued and sought after³¹.
One sees plenty of other foreign influences at work in early modern Madrid outside the court. For instance, the Spanish capital had a long tradition of importing Italian architects for its monumental buildings. In the 1560s Francesco Paciotti came to work on the Descalzas Reales monastery, service which he duly documented in a very interesting diary³². Almost two centuries later, the crown contracted the Sicilian architect Filippo Juvarra and his pupil Giovanni Battista Sacchetti to design the new Royal Palace after the old Alcázar burned in 1734³³. Madrid also relied on foreign artists -painters, draftsmen, and engravers- to map and depict the city. Their preponderance was such that there is to my knowledge not a single printed view or plan of seventeenth-century Madrid executed by a Spaniard³⁴. Italian influence was moreover initially important for the development of Spain's extremely lively commercial theatre. This centered on although was never limited to the metropolis, and quickly went off in its own direction following the creation of permanent theatre buildings in the later sixteenth century. In short, early modern Madrid was full of what are now euphemistically referred to as desirable foreigners and/or their cultural wares³⁵. And to repeat a point, the vast majority of these visitors and immigrants hailed from the European dominions of Spain or its allies. One can easily conclude that foreignness itself was no obstacle to participating in and at times overseeing a broad range of cultural exchanges. In fact, being a native of Flanders or Italy often turned out to be quite an advantage, especially in terms of competition with local craftsmen and other specialists.
Coming from the Americas was a different story, however, as it involved a different sort of foreignness. One can envision the role the New World plays here as the furthest extension within a three-link chain. The first link was anchored in what were universally recognized as Europe's cultural centers, that is, Italy and the Low Countries. Artists from these capitals of creativity sold their goods and services to the second link, a broadly defined periphery which included the metropolitan centers of the Iberian peninsula. Yet these were not only prime foci of consumption. They also housed their own painters and skilled craftsmen who joined foreigners in marketing their wares both locally and to the third link, the overseas empire36. The role of the latter was close to the exclusively passive one of classic mercantilist theory: the colonies consumed the finished products of the metropolis, and exported little art work of their own back to Europe. Virtually all movement within this chain was one-way and outwardly-directed. The sole movement in the other direction derived from the European relatively limited absorption of exotica -which was as likely to involve objects found in nature as products of native industry- and occasional novelties such as the brief fashion for the unique casta paintings of the later eighteenth century.

5. A preliminary conclusion: presence, prestige, and publicity are three separate if related problems. Much interesting work has been done as of late regarding the relation between empire and collections of art and diverse objects of all sorts37. But the focus of this essay is on a different issue: the public face of a city -in this case, the capital city of an empire- in regard to imperial power and identity. Collections and civic images often connect, but fundamentally they are different entities. What makes the difference is publicity, and by that I mean visibility within the context of the city itself, not the semi-private venues of royal and aristocratic spaces alluded to above. One thing is to house artifacts -many or few, valued or ignored, of higher or lower status- in a palace. It is another thing altogether to locate exotic within the urban landscape.
That said, there was indeed one specific juncture wherein Indians could be seen in the streets of early modern Madrid. That special moment was one of festive entertainment, and it was closely linked -as were so many things in the capital city- with the monarchy. America and its exotic inhabitants figured in the ephemeral art and architecture which accompanied various public ceremonies, especially royal entries. To cite one example, in the entry of queen Anne of Austria in 1570, one of the triumphal arches erected at the Puerta del Sol alluded to the riches of Mexico and Peru³⁸. The New World also showed up on in less solemn sorts of -once again, royal- festivities. Thus a Carnival mojiganga or cavalcade the royal official Jerónimo de Villanueva held in the Buen Retiro palace in 1634 featured a float bearing an American Indian chief and his entourage³⁹. It would be a mistake to make too much of this particular type of display. First, Madrid was not blazing any trails of its own here. On the contrary, the appearance of non-European peoples was standard fare in civic rituals throughout Europe. Urban ceremonial elsewhere both preceded and outdid Madrid's occasional allusions to the New World. For example, a procession held in Brussels in March 1517 to mark the death of Ferdinand of Aragon and the accession to the Spanish throne of Charles V featured a float of American Indians. Exotic warriors referred to as "people of Calicut" also appeared in another near-contemporary Habsburg context, the famous series of woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair, among others, known as The Triumph of Maximilian I⁴⁰. And arguably one of the most famous fêtes of the sixteenth century was the entry of the French royal couple Henri II and Catherine de' Medici into Rouen in 1550, the star attraction of which was the reconstruction of a Brazilian village replete with 300 stark naked "savages", 50 of whom were honest Indians⁴¹. Moreover, the inhabitants of the New World were not the only non-European peoples who stood in as cultural Others in the Madrid festivities. One in fact gets the impression that they came in a poor second place behind the more numerous Turks and Moors in attendance⁴². Clearly, one has to look in a different direction for evidence of a more significant and consistent presence of americana in the capital.

6. Invisibility and lack of publicity are not one and the same. At the risk of belaboring my central category of visibility, I do think one can spot some transfers that did not leave any public marks on the city, yet were nevertheless quite important in drawing attention to the Indies. Or to put it another way: while certain cultural transfers from the overseas empire did not receive the same sort of publicity that accrued to architecture and other forms making up the outer face of the city, they were present and accounted for all the same. What is more, their presence led to significant changes in behavior within the private or semi-private spheres in which they found refuge.
Such venues are by their very nature hard to reconstruct. Yet there can be little doubt that were one to visit Madrid in the seventeenth century, one would find, say, an impressive proportion of the locals drinking hot chocolate. Why this should attract our attention is something which is explained in an excellent recent book by Marcy Norton⁴³. Her research has focused on not just the transfer of American products to the Old World beginning in the sixteenth century, but also on their transformation, and indeed translation, in cultural terms. She studies two goods in particular, tobacco and chocolate, and shows how following their initial reading by Spanish missionaries and conquerors not only as closely identified with daily-life usage by New World Indians, but also as forming part of suspect social and religious practices, they were eventually reinterpreted -indeed, disenchanted, in the Weberian sense- in ways that facilitated their consumption by Europeans. In the case of both commodities this meant downplaying their links with the devil and magic, and with sex (given their fame as aphrodisiacs) and the general sinfulness of bodily pleasure. Tobacco had the worst reputation of the two, given its use by native priests in shamanistic ceremonies that to Europeans such as the Jesuit José de Acosta smacked too much of the witches' sabbath. It redeemed itself, however, thanks first to its reputed medicinal properties, and secondly, to its looming importance for the finances of the state, which astutely claimed for itself the monopoly over its importation and distribution. In the case of chocolate, which was portrayed as the privileged drink of native royalty and elites, integration into European daily consumption habits meant defining it ultimately as a form of drink instead of food. This crucial passage allowed its consumption not only on fast days, but also in particular by the part of the Spanish population for whom it held the greatest appeal, that is, the clergy, both male and female. All this led to novel patterns of mass consumption that considerably antedated the so-called "consumer revolution" of eighteenth-century England, whose role in cultural as well as economic change was first highlighted several decades ago by Jack Plumb, Neil McKendrick, and John Brewer, among others⁴⁴.
In the end, Norton sees the widespread appropriation first by Spaniards, and then by other Europeans, of products -in this case, what the anthropologist Eric Wolf referred to as the first two global stimulants- as a sort of "indianization" of Europeans by means of material culture⁴⁵. This may be putting it a bit strongly, but one cannot gainsay that the translation of chocolate and tobacco from ritual and royal objects whose use was limited to Amerindian specialists, to more morally neutral commodities that eventually reached a wide range of consumers in Spain and the rest of Europe formed part of an ever broader flow of goods from the Old World to the New. These included a striking range of foodstuffs, such as capsicum pepper and other spices, numerous types of beans, turkeys, Newfoundland cod, potatoes, tomatoes, maize, sunflower oil, and a host of other items⁴⁶. Few of these other goods needed as much cultural reinterpretation as did chocolate and tobacco, although that there is still much to be learned about the cultural side of their adaptation is suggested by the yet-to-be-written story of the adoption -as well as resistance to the adoption- in Spain of the potato⁴⁷. For our interests, what counts is the fact that tobacco and especially chocolate were items of consumption that were specifically urban, at least at first. Moreover, they steadily moved out of elite hands -tobacco consumption seems in fact to have begun on the lower rungs of the social ladder- into those of society at large.
In other words, were one to look for signs of transatlantic cultural transfers in early modern Madrid, any search for the sort of things we have seen foreigners leaving behind in other cities, such as spaces, buildings, paintings, and the like, would surely meet with disappointment. Apart from the odd codex or jewel in the collection of the king or one of his underlings, americana was not much in evidence. If, however, one looked in the city's kitchens and on its dining tables, a different story emerges. In terms of daily consumption habits, the New World not only had a considerable impact. It also had a specifically urban, even metropolitan one⁴⁸. Thus, the place to look for the New World in the Old is clearly material culture. At this largely private level one finds an American presence, and indeed a minor key of display. Perhaps there were no New World Indians in Madrid, but colonists shipped or brought back numerous objects, both animate and inanimate, ranging from decorative art to parrots and other live exotica⁴⁹. That this was a person-to-person exchange is worth stressing. Equally deserving of emphasis was the role played by return migrants, known significantly as indianos or peruleros. Their ranks included not only the main walking repositories of direct knowledge of the Americas, but also many of the central agents moving all sorts of exchanges between Spain and its distant colonies.

7. The hypothesis may be further tested by comparing the experience of Madrid with that of other imperial capitals. David Ringrose, in a suggestive article on the colonial dimension of early modern capital cities, has argued that thanks to their linking coercive power state with the market mechanisms typical of developing European economies, capital cities concentrated enough demand to allow them to act as "ports of entry" of a wide range of items within long-distance trade⁵⁰. One corollary of this special power of extension is that capital cities could be said to have had not one hinterland but several, which Ringrose divides into three levels: the immediate economic area where political control was direct and strong; the national hinterland, where influence was exercised through participation in broader urban networks, and where jurisdictional links tended to prevail over commercial ones; and finally, the range of spatially distant but politically dependent centers known as empire. Frankly, I doubt that Ringrose's construct can be automatically translated from his economic to our cultural terms. But I do think that it provides an interesting framework for analyzing the ways in which political and institutional as well as economic factors helped determine the flows of cultural transfers within these international structures. And that within frameworks of this sort, one might come up with some additional, and quite rewarding hypotheses⁵¹.
I honestly do not know if Mexico was more invisible in seventeenth-century Madrid than, say, Virginia was in London. (I suspect it was not). But it ought to be interesting -as well as fun- not only to pose this question, but also to try to compare international cultural transfers in different early modern capital and/or court cities. Many sorts of comparisons suggest themselves. Were one to try to match similar cities, one fruitful possibility would be to have a look at Madrid and Istambul. After all, both were distinguished for concentrating bureaucratic, military, and financial activities, as well as for serving as centers of multinational and multilingual empires. The latter moreover seem to have followed remarkably similar trajectories, starting with signs of "overreach" and other classic problems of empire in the later sixteenth century, followed by the perception by their own citizens and others more distant of a slow process of decline and dismemberment beginning in the seventeenth century.
Were one to pursue on the other hand the contrasts between dissimilar cities, the pairing of London and Madrid comes readily to mind, especially since this is precisely the comparison that occupies the high ground in David Ringrose's well-known economic history of early modern Madrid. Here I dare say that comparison in cultural terms suggests a different picture than Ringrose's time-worn contrast between London's dynamism and Madrid's backwardness. Roger Schofield's characterization of London in 1600 as an "essentially medieval city" poised to embark under James I on the redefinition of its elites, which included a shift in aristocratic identity and taste toward the importation of foreign styles and collecting habits, sounds uncannily like Madrid at the same moment. For all the differences in political and economic structures, both were in cultural terms "peripheral" cities, especially when compared directly with, say, the dominant models of architecture and planning that held sway in Italy. In fact, one can safely say that with all its defects, around 1600 Madrid was widely regarded as coming closer to these models than did London. Otherwise it would be hard to understand the text of around 1620 in Sir Robert Cotton's "book of projects" that affirmed that London must be allowed to grow and build new buildings if it were to rival Paris and Madrid⁵². Still, the similarities at this point outweighed the differences, so much so that the major parting of the ways in their trajectories came much later in the seventeenth century. As London grew into the largest and most dynamic urban economy in western Europe, whose thriving commerce and industry permitted a major leap forward in its expenditures on cultural consumption, Madrid stagnated into a second-rate status that would last for centuries. Interestingly, consumption in both cities not only increasingly focused on overseas goods, especially tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, and other colonial commodities. It was also accompanied by ever more explicit reference to the distant places of origins of these products within the settings where the consumption took place. In the case of London this included the exotic scenes that began to appear as decoration in London's coffeehouses in the later seventeenth century⁵³. Whether the same patterns of evocation appeared in Madrid is a question that will be answered only through further research.

8. Postscript: that the seventeenth century constituted the high point in Madrid's cosmopolitanism -until the last decade or so. The English Protestant missionary George Borrow, author of The Bible in Spain, published in 1843 and one of the most interesting (if wildly eccentric) books on Iberia ever produced by a foreigner, wrote the following:

I have visited most of the principal capitals of the
world, but upon the whole none has ever so interested
me as the city of Madrid... Petersburg has finer
streets, Paris and Edinburgh more stately edifices,
London far nobler squares... But the population!
Within a mud wall scarcely one league and a half in
circuit, are contained two hundred thousand human
beings, certainly forming the most extraordinary vital
mass in the entire world; and be it always remembered
that this mass... is strictly Spanish, though a
considerable portion are not natives of the place.
Here there are no colonies of Germans, as at Saint
Peterburg; no English factories, as at Lisbon; no
multitudes of insolent Yankees lounging through the
streets, as at Havana... but a population which,
however strange and wild, and composed of various
elements, is Spanish...⁵⁴

This passage is striking in several respects. First, the absence of foreigners contrasts sharply with the exuberant affirmation of cosmopolitanism by Hendrik Cock with which this text opened. Borrow may have been guilty of some exaggeration; after all, it is a foreigner who is commenting here on the lack of foreigners. But it is hard to cast doubt on the implication that the prolonged period known as the "decline of Spain" that culminated in the loss of the mainland empire in the Americas in the early nineteenth century was accompanied by a parallel sort of cultural contraction within its showcase city⁵⁵. What is more, the aspect that most concerns the subject of this essay is the fact that Latin Americans, filipinos, and the other subjects of transatlantic empire are, once again, conspicuously absent from this and virtually all other descriptions of bygone Madrid. The situation is dramatically different today. But arguably for the whole of Madrid's past, I have suggested that the only sphere in which we can be sure of their impact on metropolitan culture involves the consumption habits of madrileños. That said, a lot more needs to be learned before one can be certain that this was the whole story, and that other, even more invisible transfers in the sphere of language, religious belief and behavior, and the like, have not escaped our notice⁵⁶.

Notas

1 This article had its origins in talks given at a meeting of the urban history team of a European Science Foundation project on Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe, 1400-1700, held in September 2003 at the Institute for Historical Research, London, and at the Charles University, Prague, in April 2008. I am indebted to Profs. Derek Keene and Ludá Klusáková for kindly providing me these opportunities to discuss research in progress, and to Luisa Elena Alcalá, Marcy Norton, and María José del Río for their critical comments on an earlier draft of this article.

2 Cited in HILLGARTH, J. N., The Mirror of Spain, 1500-1700: The Formation of a Myth, Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 2000, pp. 277 and 56 respectively.         [ Links ]

3 ELLIOTT, J. H., The Old World and the New, 1492-1650, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970 (Span. version as El viejo mundo y el nuevo, 1492-1650, trans. R. Sánchez Mantero, Madrid, Alianza, 1972);         [ Links ] see also his second thoughts, in "Final Reflections: The Old World and the New Revisited" in KUPPERMAN, K.O. (ed.), America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750, Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1994, pp. 391-408.         [ Links ]

4 For the Fernández altarpiece, see BROWN, J., The Golden Age of Painting in Spain, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1991, p. 28;         [ Links ] and more recently, PHILLIPS, C. R. "Visualizing Imperium: The Virgin of the Seafarers and Spain's Self-Image in the Early Sixteenth Century", Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 58, 2005, pp. 815-856.         [ Links ] For the later proliferation in Seville of botanical gardens and collections of naturalia, see the excellent overviews in GÓMEZ, S., "Natural Collections in the Spanish Renaissance", in BERETTA, M. (ed.), From Private to Public: Natural Collections and Museums, Sagamore Beach, MA, Science History Publications USA, 2005, pp. 13-40,         [ Links ] and PARDO TOMÁS, J., Un lugar para la ciencia: escenarios de práctica científica en la sociedad hispana del siglo XVI, La Orotava, Tenerife, Fundación Canaria Orotava de Historia de la Ciencia, 2006, pp. 75-109.         [ Links ] For background on the latter see also URQUÍZAR HERRERA, A., Coleccionismo y nobleza: signos de distinción social en la Andalucía del Renacimiento, Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2007.         [ Links ]

5 See the brief summary in CARBAJO ISLA, M. F., La población de la villa de Madrid. Desde finales del siglo XVI hasta mediados del siglo XIX, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1987, pp. 115-125;         [ Links ] and more generally, RINGROSE, D. R., Madrid and the Spanish Economy, 1560-1850, Berkeley-Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1983 (Span. version as Madrid y la economía española, 1560-1850, trans. A. Crespo Arana and A. Bahamonde, Madrid, Alianza, 1985).         [ Links ]

6 See in particular HERNÁNDEZ, M., A la sombra de la Corona: Poder local y oligarquía urbana, Madrid, 1606-1808, Madrid, Siglo XXI, 1995,         [ Links ] and his "Forging Nobility: The Construction of a Civic Elite in Early Modern Madrid", Urban History, vol. 27 (2), 2000, pp. 165-188;         [ Links ] and CRUZ, J., Gentlemen, Bourgeois, and Revolutionaries: Political Change and Cultural Persistence Among the Spanish Dominant Groups, 1750-1850, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996 (Span. version as Los notables de Madrid: las bases sociales de la revolución liberal española, Madrid, Alianza, 2000).         [ Links ]

7 COCK, E., Mantua Carpentana heroice descripta. Descripción de Madrid compuesta a fines del siglo XVI en exámetros, eds. A. Morel-Fatio and A. Rodríguez Villa, Madrid, G. Hernando, 1883.         [ Links ] Cock originally wrote this text in 1582.

8 There are to my knowledge few studies of Indians in early modern Iberia -hardly a surprise, when one considers that during much of the early modern era it was (at least in theory) illegal for Amerindians to travel to Spain. To date the broadest overview is MIRA CABALLOS, E., "Aproximación al estudio de una minoría étnica: Indios en la España del siglo XVI", Hispania, vol. 56 (194), 1996, pp. 945-964;         [ Links ] the sole reference to Madrid therein is the mention on p. 959 of the 1552 case of a Guatemalan Indian woman who belonged to one Juan Pontiel de Salinas of that city. This absence did not prevent American Indians from being depicted in "local" scenes. Note the presence of an Amerindian woman in the procession accompanying Philip V on a 1702 visit to the Escorial in the lower left-hand corner of a contemporary engraving (by Pierre Gallays?), reproduced in SANTIAGO PÁEZ, E. (ed.), La Real Biblioteca Pública, 1711-1760: De Felipe V a Fernando VI, Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 2004, p. 107.         [ Links ]

9 My colleague Luisa Elena Alcalá has kindly reminded me (personal communication, March 2008) that there must have been numerous pious donations of this sort in early modern Madrid, and that some of these gifts involved different forms of artwork. One example she cites is an Ecce Homo made of corn stalks, now in the Descalzas Reales monastery.

10 See SÁNCHEZ DE MADARIAGA, E., Cofradías y sociabilidad en el Madrid del Antiguo Régimen, Ph.D. dissertation, Universidad Autónoma, Madrid, 1996, p. 667.         [ Links ] Note also that another congregation of the same name was founded on C. San Cayetano in 1780 (p. 666). The exiled Mexican priest and historian S. T. de Mier mentioned the San Felipe brotherhood in an account of his stay in Madrid in the early 1800s; see The Memoirs of Fray Servando Teresa de Mier, trans. H. Lane, ed. Susana Rotker, New York, Oxford University Press, 1998, p. 144.         [ Links ]

11We have recently learned considerably more about their novel political and cultural initiatives thanks to an unusually interesting book by STUDNICKI-GISBERT, D., A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal's Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.         [ Links ] This work shows how the Portuguese merchant-financiers of converted Jewish origin publicly articulated projects of political and economic reform that constituted true intellectual innovations within an increasingly schlerotic and unresponsive system of imperial administration. Among the growing number of studies of this group in Madrid, see: CARO BAROJA, J., "La sociedad criptojudía en la corte de Felipe IV", in his Inquisición, brujería y criptojudaismo, Barcelona, Ariel, 1972, pp. 13-180;         [ Links ] BOYAJIAN, J.C., Portuguese Bankers at the Court of Spain, 1626-1650, New Brunswick, Rutgers University Press, 1983;         [ Links ] EBBEN, M., "Un triángulo imposible: la Corona española, el Santo Oficio y los banqueros portugueses, 1627-1655", Hispania, vol. 53 (184), 1993, pp. 541-556;         [ Links ] SCHREIBER, M., Marranen in Madrid 1600-1670, Stuttgart, Franz Steiner, 1994;         [ Links ] and LÓPEZ BELINCHÓN, B., Honra, libertad y hacienda. Hombres de negocios y judíos sefardíes, Alcalá de Henares: Universidad de Alcalá, 2001,         [ Links ] and his "'Sacar la sustancia al reino': Comercio, contrabando y conversos portugueses, 1621-40", Hispania, vol. 209, 2001, pp. 1017-1050.         [ Links ]

12 Details in BROWN, J. and ELLIOTT, J. H., A Palace for a King: The Buen Retiro and the Court of Philip IV, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2003 [orig. ed. 1980], p. 103 (Span. version as Un palacio para el Rey: el Buen Retiro y la corte de Felipe IV, trans. V. Lleó and M.L. Balseiro, Madrid, Taurus, 2003).         [ Links ] I would not make too much of this point, as the most notorious Portuguese converso financier associated with this project, Manuel Cortizos, was actually more closely involved with a different building in this complex, the "ermita de San Bruno". For details, see ibid., pp. 103 and 212.

13 Things started off poorly even before Bargrave reached Madrid. He remarked that the road leading to the city from the east was the "meanest I have ever seen of Princes Seat" with the sole exception of Yash in Moldavia (!). See The Travel Diary of Robert Bargrave, Levant Merchant, 1647-1656, ed. M. G. Brennan, Aldershot, Hakluyt Society, Ashgate, 1999, p. 195.         [ Links ]

14 Ibid., pp. 200-209. Although Bargrave did not mention it, the Real Armería also included an especially intriguing piece of Amerindian martial art: an adarga or shield made from leather, paper, and bird feathers which was given to Philip II sometime after 1571 (it includes a depiction of the battle of Lepanto). For an illustration, see SÁENZ DE MIERA, J., "Curiosidades, maravillas, prodigios y confusión: Posesiones exóticas en la Edad de los Descubrimientos", in Las sociedades ibéricas y el mar a finales del siglo XVI, Lisbon-Madrid, Pabellón de España, Exposición Mundial de Lisboa 1998, 1998, pp. 133-166 [144]         [ Links ]. Many visitors were allowed to see the Escorial library's rich holdings in manuscripts, books, and minor art works from the Americas, Asia, north Africa, and the Middle East. Studies of this unique repository include: ANDRÉS, G. DE, La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial, Madrid, Aldus, 1970;         [ Links ] JUSTEL CALABOZO, B., La Real Biblioteca de El Escorial y sus manuscritos árabes: sinopsis histórico-descriptiva, Madrid, Instituto Hispano-Árabe de Cultura, 1978;         [ Links ] BOUZA ALVAREZ, F., "Arte en Madrid en la Edad Moderna: la biblioteca de El Escorial", Torre de los Lujanes, vol. 25, 1993, pp. 63-88;         [ Links ] GONZALO SÁNCHEZ-MOLERO, J. L., La 'librería rica' de Felipe II: Estudio histórico y catalogación, El Escorial-Madrid, Instituto Escurialense de Investigaciones Históricas y Artísticas, 1998;         [ Links ] and GÉAL, F., Figures de la bibliothèque dans l'imaginaire espagnol du Siècle d'Or espagnol, Paris, Champion, 1999.         [ Links ] A fire in 1671 destroyed most of one of the most systematic collections of americana in early modern Europe: the naturalist Francisco Hernández's numerous drawings and data regarding New World plants produced during his scientific expedition to Mexico in the 1570s. For more on this ambitious project, see: VAREY, S. and CHABRÁN, R., "Medical Natural History in the Renaissance: The Strange Case of Francisco Hernández", Huntington Library Quarterly, vol. 57 (2), 1994, pp. 125-152,         [ Links ] and their anthology of his works, The Mexican Treasury: The Writings of Dr. Francisco Hernández, ed. S. Varey, trans. R. Chabrán, C. L. Chamberlin, S. Varey, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000;         [ Links ] LÓPEZ PIÑERO, J. M. and PARDO TOMÁS, J., La influencia de Francisco Hernández (1515-1587) en la constitución de la botánica y la materia médica moderna, Valencia, Universidad de Valencia-CSIC, 1996;         [ Links ] VAREY, S., CHABRÁN, R., and WEINER, D. B. (eds.), Searching for the Secrets of Nature: The Life and Works of Dr. Francisco Hernández, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2000;         [ Links ] and CAMPILLO ALVAREZ, J. E., Francisco Hernández. El descubrimiento científico del Nuevo Mundo, Toledo, 2000.         [ Links ]

15 MURET, J., "Cartas escritas desde Madrid en 1666 y 1667", in GARCÍA MERCADAL, J. (ed.), Viajes de extranjeros por España y Portugal. Desde los tiempos más remotos hasta comienzos del siglo XX. Vol. III, Salamanca, Junta de Castilla y León, 1999, pp. 543-566 [557]         [ Links ]. I came across this reference in CABELLO CARRO, P., Coleccionismo americano indígena en la España del siglo XVIII, Madrid, Ed. Cultura Hispánica, 1989, p. 26;         [ Links ] pages 22-33 of this work provide a succinct introduction to American materials in early modern Spanish collections. See also AGUILÓ ALONSO, M. P., "El coleccionismo de objetos procedentes de ultramar a través de los inventarios de los siglos XVI y XVII", in Relaciones artísticas entre España y América, Madrid, CSIC, 1990, pp. 107-149.         [ Links ]

16 For a comprehensive survey which details the major clusters of americana in early modern Europe, see FEEST, C. F., "The Collecting of American Indian Artifacts in Europe, 1493-1750" in KUPPERMAN (ed.), America in European Consciousness, 1493-1750, pp. 324-360.         [ Links ] Other general overviews include FEEST's own "Mexico and South America in the European Wunder-Kammer" in IMPEY, O. and MACGREGOR, A. (eds.), The Origins of Museums: The Cabinets of Curiosities in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Europe, Oxford, Clarendon, 1985, pp. 237-244,         [ Links ] and "European Collecting of American Indian Artefacts and Art", Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 5, 1993, pp. 1-11;         [ Links ] as well as SHELTON, A. A., "Cabinets of Transgression: Renaissance Collections and the Incorporation of the New World", in ELSNER, J. and CARDINAL, R. (eds.), The Cultures of Collecting, Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1994, pp. 177- 203,         [ Links ] and MASON, P., Infelicities: Representations of the Exotic, Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 67-89.         [ Links ]

17 For the New World gold and objects Cortés shipped to Charles V, and which eventually wound up in the collections of Margaret of Austria and Ferdinand I as well as those of the Spanish Monarchy, see CABELLO CARRO, Coleccionismo americano indígena, pp. 24-25, and EISLER, W. "The 'Wunderkammer' of Charles V: The Emperor, Science, Technology, and the Expanding World", Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo- Germanico in Trento, vol. 19, 1993, pp. 11-52 [31-38]         [ Links ].

18 I quote from the version in HOLT, E.G. (ed.), A Documentary History of Art. Volume I. The Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Garden City NY, Doubleday Anchor, 1957, p. 339.         [ Links ] For a detailed study of this text, see HUTCHINSON, J. C., Albrecht Dürer: A Biography, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 130-75.         [ Links ]

19 ORSO, S. N., Philip IV and the Decoration of the Alcázar of Madrid, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, p. 196.         [ Links ] For more information on exotica in the Royal Palace, see CHECA, F. (ed.), El Real Alcázar de Madrid. Dos siglos de arquitectura y coleccionismo en la corte de los Reyes de España, Madrid, Nerea, 1994,         [ Links ] and the exhibition catalogue Oriente en Palacio. Tesoros asiáticos en las colecciones reales españolas, Madrid, Patrimonio Nacional, 2003.

20 Details in BOTTINEAU, Y., "L'Alcázar de Madrid et l'inventaire de 1686: aspects de la cour d'Espagne au 17e siècle (3)", Bulletin Hispanique, vol. 60, 1958, pp. 450-483, especially pp. 456f.         [ Links ]

21 Details in SÁENZ DE MIERA, J., "Ciencia y estética en torno a Felipe II. Imágenes naturalistas de América en El Escorial", Reales Sitios, vol. 29, nº 112, 1992, pp. 49-60,         [ Links ] and CHECA, F., Felipe II, mecenas de las artes, Madrid, Nerea, 1993, pp. 245-248.         [ Links ] Perhaps the runner-up space on this list would be the royal palace at Aranjuez, whose extensive grounds housed not only a botanical garden with a wide range of American plants, but also (as did the Escorial) a number of live animals brought from the Indies and elsewhere. Details in CHECA, F., Felipe II, mecenas de las artes, pp. 112-114 and 122-130, and LUENGO, A. and MILLARES, C., "Estudio y análisis del Jardín de la Isla de Aranjuez", in AÑON, C. and SANCHO, J. L. (eds.), Felipe II, el rey íntimo. Jardín y naturaleza en el reinado de Felipe II, Madrid, Sociedad Estatal para la Conmemoración de los Centenarios de Felipe II y Carlos V, 1998, pp. 243-266.         [ Links ] For the Hernández expedition, see the bibliography cited in note 13 above.

22 For a brief list of private collections in Madrid featuring New World materials, see GÓMEZ, S., "Natural Collections in the Spanish Renaissance", p. 17. Needless to say, not all the americana in aristocratic collections was located in Madrid. Charles V's treasurer Francisco de los Cobos, for example, had exotic pieces from the spoils of Hernán Cortés and Francisco Pizarro in his palace in Valladolid; see MORENO, A. (ed.), Francisco de los Cobos y su época, Madrid, Electa, 1997, p. 31.         [ Links ] The extensive holdings of his friend Diego Hurtado de Mendoza also contained many overseas items, including Mexican idols. These had been sent by his brother Antonio, who had served as viceroy in Peru in 1550-1552, and were seen by prominent intellectuals such as the converso physician Amatus Lusitanus in Hurtado de Mendoza's palace in Venice (SPIVAKOVSKY, E., Son of the Alhambra: Don Diego Hurtado de Mendoza, 1504-1575, Austin, University of Texas Press, 1970, p. 73).         [ Links ] Other collections containing americana are mentioned in MORÁN, J. M. and CHECA, F., El coleccionismo en España. De la cámara de maravillas a la galería de pinturas, Madrid, Cátedra, 1985, pp. 48-52, 107-111, 149-152, and 129-138.         [ Links ]

23 Studies of this well-known visit include SIMÓN DÍAZ, J., "La estancia del cardenal legado Francesco Barberini en Madrid en el año 1626", Anales del Instituto de Estudios Madrileños, vol. 17, 1980, pp. 159- 213,         [ Links ] and HARRIS, E., "Cassiano dal Pozzo on Diego Velázquez", Burlington Magazine, vol. 112, 1970, pp. 364-373.         [ Links ] Cassiano's text has recently appeared in the original Italian along with Spanish translation as Diario del viaje a España del Cardenal Francesco Barberini escrito por Cassiano dal Pozzo, ed. A. ANSELMI, trans. A. MINGUITO, Madrid, Fundación Carolina-Doce Calles, 2004.         [ Links ]

24 The classic study of princely collections in early modern Europe is JULIUS VON SCHLOSSER's Las cámaras artísticas y maravillosas del Renacimiento tardío, Madrid, Akal, 1988 (a translation of the 2nd, revised ed. of 1923; the work was originally published in Leipzig in 1908).         [ Links ] The most detailed section of the book (pp. 55-129) deals with the cabinet of curiosities archduke Ferdinand of Tyrol assembled at his castle at Ambras near Innsbruck; for its New World holdings, whose origins dated to the gifts Charles V gave to his brother Ferdinand in 1524, see pp. 99-103, and the bibliography cited on p. 99n. Note that von Schlosser does not mention Madrid; in fact, there are virtually no references to Spain at all in the text. For more recent studies, see: BALSIGER, B. J., The 'Kunst- und Wunderkammern': A Catalogue Raisonné of Collecting in Germany, France, and England, 1565-1750, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1970;         [ Links ] LUGLI, A., Naturalia e mirabilia. Il collezionismo enciclopedico nelle Wunderkammern d'Europa, Milan, Mazzotta, 1983;         [ Links ] IMPEY and MACGREGOR (eds.), The Origins of Museums; POMIAN, K., Collectionneurs, amateurs et curieux, Paris, Venise, XVIe-XVIIIe siècle, Paris, Gallimard, 1987;         [ Links ] KAUFMANN, T. D., The Mastery of Nature: Aspects of Art, Science, and Humanism in the Renaissance, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1993;         [ Links ] and BREDEKAMP, H., The Lure of Antiquity and the Cult of the Machine: The Kunstkammer and the Evolution of Nature, Art and Technology, trans. A. Brown, intro. A. Grafton, Princeton, Marcus Wiener, 1995.         [ Links ]

25 Studies of specific collections include: VANDENBROECK, P., "Amerindian Art and Ornamental Objects in Royal Collections: Brussels, Mechelen, Duurstede, 1520-1530", in America, Bride of the Sun, Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, 1992, pp. 99-119;         [ Links ] TOORIAN, L., "The Earliest Inventory of Mexican Objects in Munich, 1572", Journal of the History of Collections, vol. 6, 1994, pp. 59-67;         [ Links ] JOHNSON, C. L., Negotiating the Exotic: Aztec and Ottoman Culture in Habsburg Europe, 1500-1590, Ph.D. dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2000;         [ Links ] MACDONALD, D., "Collecting a New World: The Ethnographic Collections of Margaret of Austria", Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 33, nº 3, Fall 2002, pp. 649-663;         [ Links ] and YAYA, I., "Wonders of America: The Curiosity Cabinet as a Site of Representation and Knowledge", forthcoming in the Journal of the History of Collections.         [ Links ] See also the numerous monographic works by CHRISTIAN FEEST, including: "Zemes idolum diabolicum. Surprise and Success in Ethnographic Kunstkammer Research", Archiv für Volkerkunde, nº 40, 1986, pp. 181-198;         [ Links ] "Vienna's Mexican Treasures: Aztec, Mixtec and Tarascan Works from the Sixteenth Century", Archiv für Volkerkunde, vol. 44, 1990, pp. 1-64;         [ Links ] and "North America in the European Wunderkammer", Archiv für Volkerkunde, vol. 46, 1992, pp. 61-109.         [ Links ]

26 An excellent source for the study of the exchanges involving americana between the different branches of the Habsburgs is ALMUDENA PÉREZ DE TUDELA and ANNEMARIE JORDAN GSCHWEND's richly documented "Luxury Goods for Royal Collectors: Exotica, Princely Gifts and Rare Animals Exchanged between the Iberian Courts and Central Europe in the Renaissance, 1560-1612", Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen Museums Wien, vol. 3, 2001, pp. 1-127.         [ Links ] Also of note is the work of KARL RUDOLF, such as his "Die Kunstbestrebungen Kaiser Maximilian II. im Spannungsfeld zwischen Madrid und Wien. Untersuchungen zu den Sammlungen der österreichischen und spanischen Habsburger", Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen in Wien, vol. 91, 1995, pp. 165-256.         [ Links ]

27 The leading study of Philip II's activity as a collector is CHECA, F., Felipe II, mecenas de las artes; pp. 24-25, 158-159, and 245-248 deal with americana amid his holdings. His collecting habits are also examined in the essays collected in MULCAHY, R., Philip II of Spain: Patron of the Arts, Dublin, Four Courts Press, 2004.         [ Links ]

28 This suggestion has been reported in various studies. See, for example, CABELLO CARRO, P., Coleccionismo americano indígena, p. 26, along with LAZURE, G. "Possessing the Sacred: Monarchy and Identity in Philip II's Relic Collection at the Escorial", Renaissance Quarterly, vol. 60, 2007, pp. 58-93 [72]         [ Links ].

29 A quick checklist of this exotica can be found in SÁENZ DE MIERA, J., "Curiosidades...", pp. 144- 147. See also the various articles by SÁENZ DE MIERA, CABELLO CARRO and others in Reales Sitios, nº 112, 1992, pp. 21-60, on surviving American items in the present-day collections of the Patrimonio Real, the heir to the early modern royal collections.

30 Two recent exhibitions held in the Prado Museum eloquently illustrate this point. "The Sale of the Century", organized in 2002 by John Elliott and Jonathan Brown, centered on Philip IV's opportunistic acquisition of many of the choice pieces of Charles I's art collection in the so-called Commonwealth sale of the early 1650s. Shortly thereafter the Prado housed an omnibus Titian show, the single largest retrospective of paintings by this artist ever. Most of these hailed from the Prado's own permanent collection thanks to the unceasing patronage of Charles V and his son Philip II throughout the sixteenth century. The catalogues of these exhibitions have been published as BROWN, J. and ELLIOTT, J. (eds.), The Sale of the Century: Artistic Relations Between Spain and Britain, 1604-1655, New Haven-Madrid, Yale University Press-Museo Nacional del Prado, 2002,         [ Links ] and FALOMIR, M. (ed.), Tiziano, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2003.         [ Links ]

31 Overwhelming evidence of the predominance of Italian art within private collections in seventeenth- century Madrid can be found in the massive inventory of art works sponsored by the Getty Center; see BURKE, M. B. and CHERRY, P., Collections of Paintings in Madrid, 1601-1755, ed. M. L. GILBERT, Los Angeles, The Provenance Index of the Getty Information Institute-Fondazione dell'Istituto Bancario San Paolo, 1992, 2 vols.         [ Links ] For one particularly eloquent example of the degree to which Spanish aristocratic collections could be skewed toward Italian painting and sculpture, see BROWN, J. and KAGAN, R. L., "The Duke of Alcalá: His Collection and Its Evolution", Art Bulletin, vol. 69 (2), June 1989, pp. 231-255.         [ Links ] See more generally on this question BURKE, M. B., Private Collections of Italian Art in Seventeenth-Century Spain, Ph.D. dissertation, New York University, 1984.         [ Links ] I would note in passing that the promotion of specifically Spanish artists under Philip IV -the case of Velázquez is the best known instance- did not alter the generally higher valuation of Flemish and especially Italian art.

32 For Paciotti's contribution to the Descalzas, see MARÍAS, F. and BUSTAMANTE, A., "De las Descalzas Reales a la Plaza Mayor: Dibujos madrileños en Windsor Castle de la colección de Cassiano dal Pozzo", in Cinco siglos de arte en Madrid... III Jornadas de Arte..., Madrid, Alpuerto, 1991, pp. 73-85.         [ Links ] For the diary, see MARÍAS, F., "La memoria española de Francesco Paciotti: de Urbino al Escorial", Anuario del Departamento de Historia y Teoría del Arte, UAM, vol. 13, 2001, pp. 97-106.         [ Links ]

33 This followed in the wake of the failure of the new Bourbon dynasty to put into effect plans for rebuilding Madrid along recognizably French lines. Note for example the extraordinary 1712-15 project by Robert de Cotte for a new royal palace in the Retiro area on the eastern side of the city. The plans are reproduced in FOSSIER, F., Les dessins du fonds Robert de Cotte de la Bibliothèque nationale de France: Architecture et décor, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France-École française de Rome, 1997, pp. 664-676.         [ Links ]

34 To cite merely the best known example, the most famous depiction of early modern Madrid, Pedro Texeira's "topographic" plan of 1656, was drawn by a Portuguese artist, engraved by a Dutch Anabaptist, and printed in Antwerp. See El Atlas del Rey Planeta: La 'Descripción de España y de las costas y puertas de sus reinos' de Pedro Texeira, 1634, eds. F. PEREDA and F. MARÍAS, Hondarribia, Nerea, 2002, p. 19.

35 For more on how early modern city-dwellers categorized and received the foreigners in their midst, see CALABI, D. and CHRISTENSEN, S. T. (eds.), Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Europe. Vol. 2. Cities and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 1400-1700. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2007.         [ Links ]

36 See MARCHI, N. DE and MIEGROT, H. VAN, "Exploring Markets for Netherlandish Paintings in Spain and Nueva España", Nederlands Kunsthistorisch Jaarboek, vol. 50, 1999, pp. 81-111 for a fascinating reconstruction of the mechanisms by which Flemish (and even Dutch!) painters mass-produced art works for reshipment to Mexico and Peru via Seville.         [ Links ]

37 As in MAYA JASANOFF's suggestive "Collectors of Empire: Objects, Conquests and Imperial Self- Fashioning", Past and Present, 184, Aug. 2004, pp. 109-136.         [ Links ]

38 As noted in ESCOBAR, J., The Plaza Mayor and the Shaping of Baroque Madrid, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 94 (Span. version forthcoming).         [ Links ] For more on this entry, see RÍO BARREDO, M. J. DEL, Madrid, Urbs Regia: La capital ceremonial de la Monarquía Católica, prologue P. Burke, Madrid, Marcial Pons, 2000, pp. 63-76.         [ Links ]

39 BROWN and ELLIOTT, A Palace for a King, p. 213.

40 See SÁENZ DE MIERA, J., "Curiosidades...", pp. 152-153, MACDONALD, D., "Collecting a New World...", p. 649, and GINZBURG, C., "Memory and Distance: Learning from a Gilded Silver Vase (Antwerp, c. 1530)", Diogenes, nº 201, 2004, pp. 99-112 [105]         [ Links ]. The image itself can be found in The Triumph of Maximilian I: 137 Woodcuts by Hans Burgkmair and Others, New York, Dover, 1964, no. 131. 41 The rest were Norman sailors recruited to undress and to pretend to be Brazilians for the occasion. Among the numerous studies of this headline-grabbing festivity, see MASSA, J.-M., "Le Monde luso-brésilien dans la joyeuse entrée de Rouen", in JACQUOT, J. (ed.), Les fétes de la Renaissance, Paris, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique, 1975, vol. III, 105-116,         [ Links ] which reproduces some of the woodcuts illustrating the entry, and WINTROUB, M., "Civilizing the Savage and Making a King: The Royal Entry Festival of Henri II (Rouen, 1550)", Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 29 (2), Summer 1998, pp. 465-494.         [ Links ]

42 JESÚS SÁENZ DE MIERA argues as much in his "Curiosidades...", p. 138, and goes on to note that following the visit to Madrid in 1623 of Charles, prince of Wales, the gifts he received included an elephant, camels, and an ostrich, but no fauna from the New World.

43 Sacred Gifts, Profane Pleasures: A History of Tobacco and Chocolate in the Atlantic World, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 2008.         [ Links ]

44 MCKENDRICK, N., BREWER, J., and PLUMB, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1982.         [ Links ]

45 See WOLF, E. R., Europe and the People Without History, Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1982, pp. 332-346.         [ Links ]

46 See the summary in REBORA, G., Culture of the Fork: A Brief History of Food in Europe, trans. A. SONNENFELD, New York, Columbia University Press, 2001 [orig. ed. 1998], pp. 118-126.         [ Links ] Spanish prominence in the New World transfer was actually nothing new, as Spain had long served as a locus for the introduction and/or extension of "exotic" foods into Europe. During the Middle Ages it acted as a conduit to northern Europe of foods of African and Islamic origin, including rice, cane sugar, eggplant, spinach, and many other comestibles.

47 Spain has yet to find a successor to REDCLIFFE SALAMAN, whose extraordinary The History and Social Influence of the Potato, originally published in 1948, still lingers on as one of the classics of food history. One valuable collective work is LÓPEZ LINAGE, J. (ed.), De la papa a la patata: la difusión del tubérculo andino, Madrid, Ministerio de Pesca y Alimentación, 1991,         [ Links ] but much more work needs to be done before we have a firm chronology and geography of the potato's introduction, spread, and shifting uses.

48 Needless to say, another form of largely private consumption closely related to the New World was the ownership and circulation of books and other texts concerning the Americas. Not enough is known of this subject to venture any guesses as to whether interest in such matters was stronger in Madrid than elsewhere. For the presence of books on American themes in local private libraries, see PRIETO BERNABÉ, J. M., Lectura y lectores. La cultura del impreso en el Madrid del Siglo de Oro, 1550-1650, preface F. BOUZA, Mérida, Editora Regional de Extremadura, 2004, vol. I, pp. 152-153, 262, and 316f.         [ Links ] For some stimulating reflections on the related question of the intellectual debts early modern Europe owed colonial America, see CAÑIZARES-ESGUERRA, J., How to Write the History of the New World: Historiographies, Epistemologies, Identities and the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 2001 (Span. version forthcoming).         [ Links ]

49 I deal briefly with New World parrots in my "Los loros de Parets: Reflexiones sobre una fuente autobiográfica", Estudis, vol. 30, 2004, pp. 7-20.         [ Links ]

50 RINGROSE, D., "Capital Cities and their Hinterlands: Europe and the Colonial Dimension" in CLARK, P. and LEPETIT, B. (eds.), Capital Cities and their Hinterlands in Early Modern Europe, Aldershot, Scolar, 1996, pp. 217-240 [220]         [ Links ]. See also his "The Paradoxes of a Royal City: Madrid and the Transmission of Values in Spanish Culture", in La ville et la transmission des valeurs culturelles au Bas Moyen Age et aux temps modernes, Brussels, 1996, pp. 19-33,         [ Links ] which focuses more on the national than the transatlantic reach of Madrid's influence.

51 I pursue this tack somewhat further in my "Urban Life in Spain and Europe: Some Points of Comparison", soon to appear in a Festschrift for Don Antonio Domínguez Ortiz to be published by the University of Granada.

52 Cited in SLACK, P., "Perceptions of the Metropolis in Seventeenth-Century England", in BURKE, P., HARRISON, B., and SLACK, P. (eds.), Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000, pp. 161-180 [166]         [ Links ].

53 Personal communication from Prof. Derek Keene, September 2003. See now COWAN, B., The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse, New Haven, Yale University Press, 2005,         [ Links ] and his "Publicity and Privacy in the History of the British Coffeehouse", History Compass, vol. 5, 2007.         [ Links ]

54 Cited in THOMAS, H. (ed.), Madrid: A Travellers' Companion, London, Constable, 1988, p. 76.         [ Links ]

55 Note by way of contrast NICHOLAS HUDSON's intriguing argument that eighteenth-century Londoners accented their city's status as an imperial center not by means of a centralized topography or symbolism but rather by celebrating the diversity of its inhabitants; see his "Samuel Johnson, Urban Culture, and the Geography of Postfire London", SEL, vol. 42 (3), 2002, pp. 577-600.         [ Links ]

56 One parting shot: I dare say the most likely place to look for public representations of the American empire in early modern Madrid would be the theatre. That the indiano -that is, the return emigrant- was a stock (usually comic) character in Golden Age theatre is well known; for a quick overview see MARISCAL, G., "The Figure of the Indiano in Early Modern Spanish Culture", Journal of Spanish Cultural Studies, vol. 2, 2001, pp. 55-68.         [ Links ] Any broader study of the question of the presence of empire obviously would have to take into account this dramatic dimension.