Karin Hellwig, who holds a PhD in Art History from the Free University of Berlin, worked for more than three decades at the Zentralinstitut für Kunstgeschichte in Munich. Her research is focused on Early Modern Age art theory in Spain and Italy (La literatura artística española del siglo XVII, 1996/1999), Spanish seventeenth-century painting (with important essays on Velázquez and Murillo) and travel around Spain in the Early Modern Age. She has also devoted many studies to art historical literature of the 1800s and early 1900s (Von der Vita zur Künstlerbiographie, 2005) and is editor of the volume Spanien und Deutschland. Kulturtransfer im 19. Jahrhundert/España y Alemania. Transferencia cultural en el siglo XIX (2007).