Gaspar de Guzman, Count-Duke of Olivares (1587 - 1645). Gaspar de Guzmán y Pimentel, 1st Duke of Sanlúcar, 3d Count of Olivares, GE, KOA, known as the Count-Duke of Olivares, was a Spanish royal favourite of Philip IV and minister. As prime minister from 1621 to 1643, he over-exerted Spain in foreign affairs and unsuccessfully attempted domestic reform. His policy of committing Spain to recapture Holland led to a renewal of the Eighty Years' War while Spain was also embroiled in the Thirty Years' War. In addition, his attempts to centralise power and increase wartime taxation led to revolts in Catalonia and in Portugal, which brought about his downfall. Olivares was born in Rome in 1587, where his father, Enrique de Guzmán, 2nd Count of Olivares, from one of Spain's oldest noble families, was the Spanish ambassador. His mother died young, and his father brought him up under a strict parental regime. He returned to Spain in 1599, and became student rector at Salamanca University. By background, he was both a man of letters and well trained in arms. During the reign of King Philip III, he was appointed to a post in the household of the heir apparent, Philip, by his maternal uncle Don Baltasar de Zúñiga, a key foreign policy advisor to Phillip III, who himself had already established a significant influence over the young prince. Olivares in turn rapidly became the young prince's most trusted advisor. When Philip IV ascended the throne in 1621, at the age of sixteen, he showed his confidence in Olivares by ordering that all papers requiring the royal signature should first be sent to the count-duke; despite this, Olivares, then aged 34, had no real experience of administration. Olivares told his uncle de Zúñiga, who was to die the following year, that he was now the dominant force at court; he had become what is known in Spain as a valido, something more than a prime minister, the favourite and alter ego of the king. His compound title is explained by the fact that he inherited the title of count of Olivares, but was created Duke of Sanlúcar la Mayor by King Philip IV of Spain. He begged the king to allow him to preserve his inherited title in combination with the new honour, according to a practice almost unique in Spanish history. Accordingly, he was commonly spoken of as el conde-duque. Olivares' personality and appearance have attracted much comment, especially by 17th-century writers, who were generally critical of them. He possessed a strikingly big, heavy body and florid face. Contemporaries described an extravagant, out-size personality with a gift for endless self-dramatisation, others, more positively, have outlined a determined, perceptive and ambitious personality. Olivares' enemies saw in him a desire to acquire excessive wealth and power. He disliked sports and light-hearted entertainment, but was a good horseman, albeit hampered by his weight in later life. Olivares did not share the king's taste for personally acquiring art and literature, although he may have helped assemble the king's own collection, and it was he who brought to Philip's attention the young artist Diego Velázquez, in 1623. For himself he formed a vast collection of state papers, ancient and contemporary, which he endeavoured to protect from destruction by entailing them as an heirloom. He also formed a splendid aviary for the Buen Retiro Palace, which lent him comfort after the death of his daughter but which opened the door for his enemies to nickname the entire Retiro the Gallinero, or the hencoop. Velázquez painted at least three portraits of his friend and original patron, producing the baroque equestrian portrait along with the standing portraits now at the Hermitage and São Paulo. It is possible that other portraits by Velázquez commissioned by the king were destroyed after Olivares' fall, in a copy of Prince Baltasar Carlos in the Riding School, his figure was painted over, though a few minor portraits made in the conde-duque's last years of power remain. The royal favourite, who also was Sumiller de Corps and Caballerizo mayor to the King, came to power with a desire to commit the monarchy to a crusade of reform, with his early recommendations being extremely radical. The heart of the problem, Olivares felt, was Spain's moral and spiritual decline. De Zúñiga and Olivares had both presented Philip IV with the concept of restoring the kingdom to its condition under Philip II, undoing the alleged decline that had occurred under the king's father, Philip III, and in particular his royal favourite, the Duke of Lerma. Olivares was concerned that Spain was too attached to the idea of limpieza de sangre, purity of blood, and worried about Castilians' disinclination for manual work.