General Notes

Philip IV (of Spain, Naples, and Sicily) (1605-65), king of Spain, Naples, and
Sicily (1621-65), and, as Philip III, king of Portugal (1621-40), the eldest
son of Philip III, king of Spain, born in Valladolid. A weak ruler, like his
father, he entrusted the administration of affairs to others, initially to his
prime minister, Gaspar de Guzmán, conde de Olivares. During Philip's reign the
political and economic decline of Spain was accelerated by exhausting wars
with Portugal, the Netherlands, and France and by the policy of supporting the
Habsburg cause in Germany during the Thirty Years' War. His reign was marked
by the loss of Portugal in 1640, by revolt in Catalonia from 1640 to 1653, and
by a rebellion in Naples in 1647. By the Peace of Westphalia (1648), Spain was
forced to recognize the independence of the United Provinces of the
Netherlands, which consisted of the seven northern provinces. In 1659 Spain
ceded Roussillon and part of the Spanish Netherlands to France under the terms
of the Peace of the Pyrenees. A patron of arts and letters, Philip encouraged
the work of the painter Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, the dramatist
Lope de Vega, and the poet Pedro Calderón de la Barca.