Mercedes Simal López, a lecturer at Jaén University, earned a PhD (with a European Doctorate Mention and an Extraordinary Award) from the Universidad Complutense in Madrid for a thesis on the Buen Retiro palace and its collections during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Her studies are centred on courtly art and collecting, and on artistic relations between Spain and Italy during the Modern Age. She has worked as a researcher at the Museo Nacional de Artes Decorativas and at the Prado, and prominent among her publications is Los condes-duques de Benavente en el siglo XVII. Patronos y coleccionistas en su villa solariega (2002). She has also coordinated La corte de Felipe IV (1621−1665). Reconfiguración de la Monarquía Católica. Arte, coleccionismo y sitios reales (2017)