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After Charles V's abdication in 1556, Philip II became the most powerful monarch in the world. Although he did not inherit the Holy Roman Empire, the extent of his territories was even to surpass those of his father, thanks to Spain's expanding colonial empire in the New World and the East Indies. The image of Philip most familiar to posterity is the aloof, joyless, soberly clad figure transmitted by the various portraits of his court painter, Alonso Sánchez Coello.
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