Luisa Roldán (also known as La Roldána, 1652–1706) served as Escultora de Cámara (Sculptor to the Royal Chamber) in the Spanish court during the final decade of the Habsburg King Carlos II and the early rule of Felipe V, the first of Spain’s Bourbon kings. The first female to hold that title and one of the very few women who appeared in Antonio Palomino's Lives (El Parnaso…, 1724), our understanding of Luisa's life and artistic output has developed gradually, with the pace of scholarship increasing after 1964 when Beatrice Gilman Proske published some of the artist's correspondence with the court. Proske's articles represented a significant step forward in Roldána scholarship, providing invaluable glimpses of the challenges and successes that Luisa experienced. Like those of many court artists, the letters that Proske published have a predominantly unhappy tone, affording insight into Luisa's dire financial straits and suggesting a series of questions for scholarly consideration, among them: How did Luisa survive in Madrid? How were she and her work received in the Villa y Corte (town and royal court)? What skills did she need to grasp the opportunities that were open to her? This chapter records progress towards resolving those questions, augmenting the information provided in Proske’s three articles and adding a sketch of Luisa's early development in Andalucía.