The essays collected here evaluate the broad range of contexts - from political thought and militarism to art and religion - in which images of Spain and Spanish culture were created by the inhabitants of the Italian peninsula in the sixteenth century.

The essays collected here evaluate the range of contexts in which Spaniards were present in early modern Italy. They consider diplomacy, sanctity, art, politics and even popular verse. Each essay excavates how Italians who came into contact with the Spanish crown's power perceived and interacted with the wider range of identities brought amongst them by its servants and subjects. Together they demonstrate what influenced and what determined Italians' responses to Spain; they show Spanish Italy in its full transcultural glory and how its inhabitants projected its culture - throughout the sixteenth century and beyond.