Aranjuez, some 40 kilometres from Madrid, was one of the so-called royal residences (Sitios Reales) all situated within a radius of less than 80 kilometres from the capital that were intended for the relaxation of the king and his court. Aranjuez´s location on the shores of the Tajo River, amid fertile countryside, led Philip II to construct a palace that was gradually expanded by his successors, becoming one of the royal residences most frequented by the court during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unlike other places, such as the Casa de Campo, Valsaín or, above all, the El Pardo Palace, the principal appeal of Aranjuez for the court did not lie in its forests well-stocked with game, but, rather, in the splendid gardens that were generously irrigated by the adjacent river, which provided the ideal setting for social gatherings. Nevertheless, hunting was also a pastime celebrated in Aranjuez, as this canvas illustrates. Each year in May, a large hunt was typically organised, for which a large stretch of land was enclosed and into which the hunters would corral big game. Once enclosed, the animals would be directed toward a narrow passage fenced off by a cloth structure, where the king and members of his court would kill their prey. The queen and her ladies-in-waiting attended the spectacle, seated on wooden bleachers or a tabladillo (small stage) placed at one end of the fenced passage, as we see represented in this painting. In the background we can also make out the palace and the tops of the trees in the gardens of Aranjuez. We would be wrong, however, to view this painting as merely a representation of a hunting scene. The hunt for big game and all the paraphernalia that typically accompanied that activity were closely linked to the life of the king and his court. Hunting scenes like the one, set around the tabladillo, implied a capacity to organise such large-scale events, a control over the land and a degree of economic power only possessed by a few. The hunt in general -it was often said- was an image of war and, consequently, was an exercise that the king, the prince and his court were obliged to practise. Yet hunting parties as complex as this one also became images of the court, in which each estate and each individual was assigned a specific place and role. From that point of view, this canvas is one of the most important examples of self-representation produced in the court of Philip IV. In the foreground, several important figures from the court can be identified. Philip IV is easily recognisable standing next to a white horse, as he is the male character who is most sumptuously dressed. The king is engaged in conversation with Gaspar de Guzmán, the Count-Duke of Olivares, his prime minister. On the right stand a wide variety of courtiers, among whom we do not fail to find a dwarf standing next to a dog that is very similar to the one in Dwarf with a dog c.1640, by an artist in the circle of Diego Velázquez (P1203). The presence of the dwarf also confirms the courtly nature of the scene. In addition, Élisabeth, the queen consort of Spain, has presumably arrived in the red coach seen on the far right, and is represented seated on the tabladillo surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting. This painting is dated to the last years of the 1630s and is the work of Juan Bautista Martínez del Mazo, to whom it was attributed in the royal inventories from the seventeenth century. The painting follows the model established by Velázquez, Mazo´s father-in-law, in Philip IV hunting wild boar (also known as La Tela Real or The royal enclosure) c.1632–37, now in the National Gallery, London, which portrays a hunting scene at El Pardo. In Velázquez´s painting, there also appears a frieze of standing figures in the foreground, who serve to introduce the activities of the hunting party in the distance (Portús, J.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 108).