An accident at a young age left Hendrick Goltzius (1558–1617), an engraver, draftsman, and painter, with scar tissue that affected the mobility of his hand. During Goltzius’s lifetime, the artist and historian Karel van Mander published a biography that positioned Goltzius as a pinnacle of artistic excellence comparable to Michelangelo. A reevaluation of Goltzius’s career through the lens of critical disability theory reveals that his engagement with the theme of the hand in his artworks, as well as its significance in his biography, framed his disability as a source of unique embodied knowledge and pride.

In 1584, Gian Andrea Doria took command of the Spanish Monarchy’s Mediterranean fleet, leading aboard the Real, a galley unmatched in size and symbolic significance. This royal galley, built at the Royal Shipyard of Barcelona, embodied Spain’s maritime hegemony and served as the Christian flagship in the Western Mediterranean. This article examines the challenges and technical complexities involved in its construction, shedding light on early modern shipbuilding practices. Drawing on rich historical sources, it offers fresh perspectives on these iconic Mediterranean vessels, emphasizing their symbolic and strategic roles beyond warfare during their golden age.

In 1592, a group of English Catholics living in Continental exile commemorated the feast of Thomas Becket with local authorities in the Spanish city of Seville. Though surviving information about the event is sparse, this article reconstructs the complex design behind one of the most extraordinary elements in the celebration: a “devise” or visual poem featuring a representation of Elizabeth I confronted with a political and moral dilemma. The poem’s messages, intended to reach a mixed Anglo-Spanish audience, were displayed through multiple symbolic and rhetorical strategies to resignify the past and make it relatable to them—and to Elizabeth.

This article considers an underinvestigated aspect of Vesuvian iconography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the use of artistic and realistic images to represent the appearance of a landscape before and after an eruption. This was done without any of the diagrammatic images that became increasingly popular with the development of the new earth sciences. My analysis reconstructs Vesuvian iconography from this specific perspective, beginning with its origins—through an analysis of five engravings by Nicolas Perrey depicting the dramatic eruption of Vesuvius in 1631—and tracing its later developments up to the eighteenth century and the work of William Hamilton.