[1][2] The allegorical representation of the five senses as female figures had begun in the previous century, the earliest known examples being the Lady and the Unicorn series of tapestries, which date to around 1500,[3] but Brueghel was the first to illustrate the theme using assemblages of works of art, musical instruments, scientific instruments, and military equipment, accompanied by flowers, game, and fish.[2] Rubens painted the allegorical female figures, accompanied by a putto or a winged Cupid in Sight, Hearing, Smell, and Touch, and by a satyr in Taste.Brueghel created the sumptuous settings, which evoke the splendour of the court of Albert VII, Archduke of Austria, and his wife Isabella, governors of the Spanish Netherlands, to which the two artists were attached.[4] Wolfgang Wilhelm, Count Palatine of Neuburg, is the first known owner of the series of paintings; he presented them in 1634 to the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand of Austria, who had just become governor of the Spanish Netherlands following the deaths of Albert and Isabella.Ferdinand in turn offered them through the Duke of Medina de las Torres to his brother King Philip IV of Spain, who hung them in the reading room at the Royal Alcazar of Madrid.