Motherhood, which stands at a disciplinary crossroads, has become a historiographic subject in its own right. It has gone from being viewed as an exclusively biological circumstance to being considered a key social factor in shaping the historical identity of the queens of Spain. This book analyses the ‘ritual’ surrounding the birth of royal offspring at the Spanish court between the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the role played by queens, ladies-in-waiting and midwives in a cultural system based on a series of rites performed before and after childbirth.

In her book De Carlos carries out an original and well-documented reconstruction of the culture of the births of the Spanish Habsburgs and the concept of female authority. She bases her study on very different sources, as she does not focus exclusively on moral and scientific treatises but takes as her starting point visual depictions related to royal pregnancies and births, which had hitherto often been considered almost literal transcriptions of reality.

A study combining the biological, symbolic and social aspects of this phenomenon was lacking in the field of Hispanic research. This gap in our historiography has now been filled by the present book, which marks an important step towards reconstructing the phenomenon of motherhood and all its derivatives at the Spanish court of the Habsburgs.

María Cruz de Carlos Varona is a lecturer at the Department of Art History and Theory of the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid. She worked at the Museo del Prado from 2013 to 2016, both in the Department of Drawings and Prints and at the Prado School. Her lines of research, centred on the Modern Age, encompass the artistic culture of women, religious images, and the history and culture of prints. Her work in these three areas has appeared in many Spanish and international publications and she has also organised several courses and seminars.

“Nacer en palacio is a much-needed contribution to scholarship on early modern Spanish women’s lives and a gendered historiography of the Spanish Habsburg court. The confluence of social science, obstetrical practices, and history of art in this generously illustrated study of royal pregnancy and childbirth makes a compelling argument for maternity as a field of research in its own right”, Emilie L. Bergmann, Bulletin of the Comediantes

“Partiendo de la consulta de una amplísima documentación y sobre la base de una bibliografía internacional e interdisciplinar, este libro ha permitido que los estudios sobre la maternidad regia avancen y abran nuevos focos de debate”, Diana Carrió-Invernizzi, Cuadernos de Historia Moderna

“El lector encontrará un buen puñado de fascinantes historias entre las páginas de este libro, pero también un análisis erudito y perfectamente documentado del ritual del nacimiento en la corte”, Felipe Pereda, Archivo Español de Arte

“Un libro fruto de una investigación tejida durante muchos años, los suficientes para tramar fuentes originales, literatura médica y cultural. [Una] obra destacada y seguramente imprescindible para los estudios de género de la España moderna”, Juan Pimentel, Asclepio

“Este libro equilibrado, inteligente, lleno sus sugerencias, abre, gracias a su fino y sutil análisis, las puertas a nuevas investigaciones sobre un tema, el del nacimiento, necesitado de una mayor atención por parte de la historiografía española”, Jesús M. Usnáriz, Memoria y Civilización

“Conviene reseñar la exquisita edición de la obra, con una cuidada selección y edición de imágenes, que no actúan como simples ilustraciones de relleno sino que resultan una fuente básica del estudio, una fluida escritura que acerca al lector los diferentes problemas tratados en el texto y ocho apéndices que presentan textos básicos sobre los que se ha apoyado la autora en el desarrollo de su exposición”, Manuel Amador González Fuertes, Tiempos Modernos