"In early modern Europe, the collections of elite individuals were important sites to produce, exchange, and display knowledge. The reference point for my study is one of the most splendid collections of early 17th-c. Antwerp, that of the Portuguese merchant-banker Manuel Ximenes (1564-1632), praised by his contemporaries for his ‘universal knowledge of the sciences’. This is the first study of a collection of a converso merchant-banker whose family was intimately involved in Antwerp’s global trade. I argue that the various sites of display in Ximenes’ palace define a courtly cosmos of science, medicine, religion, and art as well as reflect a culture of patronage, friendship, and kinship, which lay at the very center of early modern science and global trade. This is a by definition transdisciplinary project, one that takes seriously the multiple spheres of knowledge within which artful objects and art works were viewed – spheres that themselves were shaped by the emergence of the visual. It will shed new light on the interrelationships between art, science, and religion in times of religious and political change, advance our knowledge of patronage activities of wealthy foreigners, and broaden our understanding of the early modern material culture of science and art."