Focusing on the capital city of Madrid during the first half of the seventeenth-century, this paper explores early modern concerns regarding the visual aspects of natural knowledge in the context of the remarkable expansion of the arts in Golden Age Spain.

In particular, it studies the production of an important contribution to early modern natural history, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg’s Historia Naturae (1635), against a backdrop of significant investment and dedicated patronage of the visual arts, most notably painting, in seventeenth-century Madrid.