Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation: Porcelain, Politics, and Identity at Charles III’s Aranjuez Tara Zanardi Hunter College, New York City Between 1760 and 1765, the Italian sculptor Giuseppe Gricci headed a team of artists in the creation of a Gabinete de Porcelana [Porcelain Room] at the Royal Palace of Aranjuez. Porcelain rooms were not unknown at this time, but Gricci ambitiously tested the limits of porcelain with an exuberant design scheme, an elaborate chinoiserie theme, and nearly three-dimensional deployment of the ceramic medium. The room’s innovative technique, which employs porcelain as the framework for the walls and ceiling as well as the medium for the design, is befitting this country estate of King Charles III (r. 1759–88). While the ornamentation offers a rich sensory experience, it also has deliberate political implications and may be read as an idealized expression of Charles III’s identity. As a space constructed during the Seven Years’ War (1754–63) at the commencement of his reign, the Porcelain Room had both pleasurable and political purposes that allowed the king to forge a modern Bourbon agenda and a modern Bourbon sense of kingship with international scope. The Porcelain Room, like many of Charles’s other projects, was created to exemplify the king’s opulence while also embodying political messages that promoted his reign and legitimated the Bourbons as the rightful heirs to the Spanish crown. The Porcelain Room Located in the northeast corner of the palace on the main floor, the Porcelain Room (fig. 1) was part of an extensive remodeling project and stood at a prime location at the juncture of two enfilades in the king’s chambers. It measures 15 ft 4 in. by 23 ft 4 in. (4.68 by 7.08 meters) and cost 571,555 reales de vellón.1 Gricci was the principal modeler, who directed a huge cadre of painters, sculptors, kiln experts, and other specialists in the room’s execution, Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 31 which was under way by November of 1760.2 Two doors provide entrance and two large windows offer grand vistas overlooking the gardens and Tagus River. The room is a remarkable feat of ingenuity, with vibrant colors, richly textured ornamentation, and a dynamic composition delineated by different levels of relief. It is organized in distinct registers, including the wainscoting, the central portions of the walls, the cornice, and the ceiling. When closed, the doors and windows continue the design in painted and gilded wood. Eleven mirrors with undulating porcelain frames are placed along the four walls to reflect the sheen of the white porcelain, further elaborating the polychrome enamel and gilt finishes to create a sumptuous play of surfaces. While no overarching narrative characterizes the design, the repeating avian, bestial, figural, decorative, and botanical components suggest themes of commerce, zoology, horticulture, and Far Eastern luxury—all of great significance to Charles III, especially at Aranjuez. 32 West 86th V 25 Fig. 1 Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Fig. 2 Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, western wall, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. The painted porcelain wainscoting alternates simian and avian vignettes. The monkeys and birds are placed within elaborate still lifes that include birdbaths, baskets overflowing with fruit and flowers, and myriad porcelain objects. With humorous exaggeration, the monkeys play musical instruments and display scrolls of Chinese calligraphy. In the main register of each wall, and between the pier-glasses, figural groups stand on rocky landscapes supported by dragons. Curling tails, sharp talons, brightly colored feathers, and large wings typify the dragons, one of which is depicted breathing fire. Above these mythical creatures, figures nearly three feet tall engage in various mercantile, social, and musical exchanges (fig. 2). The figures are integrated within the larger decorative ensemble through a series of sinuous lines of decorative objects, ripe fruit, and intertwining fauna, forming a type of network that covers and unites the entire room. These garlands coil in sinuous curves upward from the figure groups to the cornice, interspersed with images of butterflies, birds, and porcelain vases. Four additional figural groupings are placed above the windows and doors. On the ceiling, more figural scenes appear above each cornice, enclosed in oval frames with rocailles, while birds, fruit, flowers, garlands, vases, and rosettes create a repeating, circular pattern that radiates outward from the decorated centerpiece (fig. 3). Hanging from the center of the ceiling is a porcelain chandelier in the form of a palm tree with a monkey sitting on a boy’s shoulder. Throughout the room, each animal, figure, and luxury object is differentiated in shape, color, and design to showcase the extraordinary artistry, ingenuity, Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 33 Fig. 3 Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, detail of ceiling, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. craftsmanship, effort, and expense involved in such a tour de force. Facial expressions, clothing, shoes, and objects are rendered with considerable variety, sometimes tending to naturalism and sometimes to great exaggeration. The bodies of the animals, birds, and figures are large and made more emphatic by their projection from the wall. The figures are engaged in diverse activities— swinging, playing music, selling goods, talking—and employ a vast array of objects—musical instruments, furniture, fans, hats, pipes, jewelry, and vases. Beyond the diversity of motifs and virtuoso modeling, the construction of the room is also remarkable. The structural foundation for the entire decorative scheme is formed by large wooden planks or batons attached to the walls and ceiling. This wooden armature remains hidden from view. Screwed into the wood are flat, white porcelain plaques forming the framework that supports the high relief decoration. The plaques are irregularly shaped, forming a kind of jigsaw puzzle and “fitted into hollows that had been scooped out of the wooden backing.” 3 Their joins are discreetly concealed beneath the various layers of foliage and figures that serve as the main features of the decorative design. These nearly three-dimensional reliefs are, in turn, affixed to the white plaques with screws. According to Juan Antonio Álvarez de Quindós y Baena, the palace archivist during the reigns of Charles III and Charles IV (r. 1789–1808), screws were used to fix the individual plaques to the wooden frame because they could easily be dismantled, thus making the attachment of the objects in relief to the flat frame more practical while still allowing for a discrete assemblage.4 Although the screws are visible, they are generally integrated into the decorative scheme in ways that do not disrupt the flow of the design. This technical virtuosity allows the porcelain plaques that are flush with the wall to provide the ground or backdrop for the decorative motifs in relief, with each component molded separately. 34 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Three-armed sconces punctuate the walls throughout, and four consoles with groups of putti mark each of the corners. Charles III’s initials, “C.T.” for Carlos Tercero, are interwoven in the porcelain relief along with a crown. Gricci incorporated his own signature within a vase in the wainscoting inscribed “Joseph Gricci Delineavit et Sculit 1763,” the year when the actual installation began. The date 1763 is repeated in the upper registers of the corners, and the inscription “Año 1765” appears above the cornice to mark the completion date. The patterned marble floor, installed prior to the Porcelain Room’s erection, completes the overall multimedia ensemble. Interpreting the Space: The Identity of Charles III Despite the room’s innovative engineering and exemplary chinoiserie design, it has received little scholarly attention except for basic information regarding its production and possible artistic sources; of the latter, the main references are to François Boucher, 5 Giambattista Tiepolo, and the Meissen porcelain designers,6 although no direct correlations have been established. A major challenge to ascertaining the sources and construction history of this room is the fact that the Buen Retiro Porcelain Factory, where the elements of the room were produced, was destroyed in 1812, and with it any plans, drawings, and records that might have been related to the Aranjuez interior. The factory had been used by French troops as an artillery base during the Spanish War of Independence (1808–14) and was burned by the British. This material loss was officially noted in royal records in the early nineteenth century.7 There are other archival sources with a bearing on the design and construction of the room, such as payments to artists and bills for labor from Madrid’s Royal Palace archives.8 In addition, I have located primary sources, such as travel literature and palace accounts, which have proved useful in my analysis of the room. While it is certainly unique in the manner in which it employs the medium of porcelain, the Aranjuez room has been the subject of far less scholarship than other state rooms. This oversight is partly due to there being significantly fewer scholars of eighteenth-century Spanish art than of French, British, or German, but it is also due to the stigmatization of the rococo style, as well as the decorative arts themselves, throughout most of the twentieth century. As Alden Cavanaugh and Michael Yonan surmise, “porcelain remains at odds with art history’s self-image as a discipline concerned with the significant cultural processes manifested in ‘great art’ characterized by functionlessness, seriousness, and aesthetic detachment.” They dub this anxiety “the fear of the tchotchke.” 9 The Porcelain Room in Aranjuez, however, in addition to its intrinsic value in terms of materials, technology, and aesthetics, merits new scholarly analysis in relation to revisionist studies in material culture as well as the fundamental relationship between modern eighteenth-century interior design and identity.10 This room is a useful case study for considering how eighteenth-century practices of collection and display may have served to express imperial selffashioning and political ideology. Both the room’s material and its imagery Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 35 deserve significant examination, particularly since “chinoiserie” held different associations in Spain than it did in France or Germany. While the Porcelain Room’s resplendent dynamism and playful vignettes may suggest that the space was built simply for the pursuit of pleasure, it was part of Charles III’s careful self-presentation as king. According to Álvarez de Quindós, the Porcelain Room served as the “despacho del Rey,” meaning as Charles III’s office or outer office, where foreign and domestic dignitaries and the court’s political ministers would convene with the king.11 The room could also be used as a reception space for courtiers and visitors before entering the king’s more formal office. Coming to the palace in 1770, Álvarez de Quindós would have had firsthand knowledge of Charles III’s early use of the room, completed just five years prior to the archivist’s employment. As a place for court business, therefore, this would tend to contradict any reading of the space as primarily for leisure or for purely private use. Instead, Álvarez de Quindós’s description suggests that, like most official rooms in royal palaces of this period, the ornamentation was imbued with complex political meaning. Located within the king’s suite of rooms, it was visited by important members of court and other high-ranking officials, and it would have been required to enhance and reflect that role. Thus, the overt political context of the Porcelain Room must factor into its interpretation. After all, Spanish Bourbon identity was inevitably contentious, since many of the royal family were French or Italian born. When the last Habsburg king, Charles II (r. 1665–1700), died childless, he named Philip d’Anjou, Louis XIV’s grandson, as the next monarch of Spain (Philip V, r. 1700–46). In 1759, Charles III became the third Bourbon king to rule Spain, and he continued his predecessors’ efforts to establish Bourbon supremacy on the global stage. Although the Porcelain Room does not employ the standard pictorial symbolism of empire, such as that seen in Tiepolo’s fresco The Glorification of the Spanish Monarchy of 1762–66 for the Throne Room of the Royal Palace in Madrid, it is no less imperial or political (fig. 4). The fresco depicts an allegorical representation of Spain’s domain, which spanned much of the globe, from the Caribbean to South America and from East Asia to substantial parts of the European mainland. Both the Throne Room in the Royal Palace and the Porcelain Room at Aranjuez functioned as emblematic interiors that celebrated the empire, although in very different ways, and both were created in the highly combative climate of war among European powers. In light of these political overtones, I suggest interpreting the Porcelain Room as an expression of Charles’s royal identity: first, as an enlightened and beneficial ruler; second, as a modern European leader of refined, contemporary tastes; and third, as an international figure furthering Spain’s imperialist agenda. Improvements at Aranjuez and Charles III as Enlightened Reformer Charles III was personally involved in the creation of the Porcelain Room; he supervised the decoration and remodeling of the Aranjuez Royal Palace and 36 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Fig. 4 Giambattista Tiepolo, detail of The Glorification of the Spanish Monarchy, Throne Room, Royal Palace, Madrid, 1762–66. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. developed the surrounding town as a place of retreat for himself and his wife, Maria Amalia of Saxony (1724–60). Just forty-eight kilometers south of Madrid, Aranjuez became the royal family’s favorite palace. They resided there yearly from Easter until mid-June to enjoy hunting, the extensive gardens with plantings from distinct parts of the empire, agrarian and exotic animals, and the palace’s sumptuous interiors. Under Charles III, Aranjuez was converted into a microcosm of the empire, a model site for this reforming king, who upgraded the roads and bridges, overhauled crumbling buildings, implemented the latest practices in horticulture and zoology, and opened a hospital for his court and staff. Although previous Bourbon kings had undertaken various redesigns of the palace, the town, and the gardens, Charles III was the major instigator in the metamorphosis of the town and estate. As Henry Swinburne observed in his Travels through Spain in 1776, Aranjuez’s landscapes offered countless pleasures and “luxuries unknown to the rest of Spain.”12 Swinburne also notes that the king spent considerable sums to modernize and beautify the town: “Half a million sterling has been laid out at Aranjuez, since the year 1763; and it must be acknowledged, that wonders have been performed.”13 Part of Charles III’s redesign of the palace’s interiors included transforming the private office of his mother, Isabel de Farnesio, into the Porcelain Room. Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 37 Fig. 5 Diego de Aguirre, The Casa de Vacas in the Royal Site of Aranjuez, Seen from the New Road from Madrid, 1773. Engraving. Real Biblioteca, Madrid. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. As such a costly and sumptuous part of the king’s palace renovation, the room with its lavish chinoiserie decor can be interpreted as an expression of Charles III’s personal identification as an enlightened ruler who constructed an idealized microcosm at Aranjuez. He fostered botanical studies, zoological development, and agricultural production on the estate, promoting the latest in physiocratic notions.14 Charles III emulated Philip II (r. 1556–81), who had also collected Asian wares and installed a small zoo at Aranjuez palace that even bred dromedaries. During the eighteenth century, “it was Charles III who reinstated this activity . . . marking the occasion by ordering two fountains to be built at the Calle Príncipe entrance [of the Aranjuez gardens], with a pair of sculptures” of a bison and an elephant.15 The animals themselves were allowed to roam freely in the grounds or in large enclosures, instead of being exhibited in menageries or aviaries. These exotic creatures were part of a larger project sponsored by Charles III called the Casa de Vacas, incorporating a new milking parlor for which he ordered a hundred Swiss cows (fig. 5.).16 Swinburne also attests to the variety and number of animals kept on the property in the 1770s, listing “herds of deer,” “many-coloured birds,” “wild boar,” and “droves of buffaloes, sheep, cows, and brood mares that wander uncontroled through all these woods.”17 The domestic and exotic animals exemplify Charles’s refashioning of Aranjuez. Álvarez de Quindós states that Charles III was something of a modern reformer, “inclined to all kinds of agriculture, keen to foster it in his kingdom.”18 In order to bolster the estate’s reputation and to compete with other royal collections, Charles III even acquired three Asian elephants as a result of the fortunate negotiations undertaken in India between 1770 and 1776 by Simón de Anda y Salazar, his governor-general of the Philippines.19 38 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Charles’s interest in creatures and his cultivation of Aranjuez as an advanced agrarian ideal are echoed in the decorative scheme in the Porcelain Room, which combines Asian imagery with a sense of lavish profusion. The exuberant overall design created by Gricci is systematically organized to epitomize abundance. The bounty displayed—bunches of ripe fruit, copious flowers, and opulent tropical plants—embodies the idea of an idealized microcosm. The botanical motifs not only impose a framework on the design, they also imbue it with visual trickery, sometimes refusing to stay contained within the distinct registers of the space. Flowers and fruit burst forth from vases, but they also appear intertwined in the rocailles and scrolls of the mirror frames and cornice. Nature is perfected and aestheticized: the material play delights the viewer, inviting tactile gratification. For Charles III, the Porcelain Room provided a material and an iconographic framework to showcase the abundance that resulted from his modernization efforts, his collecting of animals, and his botanical specimens in Aranjuez. Porcelain Collection, Display, and Production as Royal Status Symbol in Europe A porcelain collection was a status symbol during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The elite families of Europe collected various types of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain and developed novel ways of exhibiting their collections, whether separately or in conjunction with other precious objects.20 Common means of display included shelves and consoles installed in the walls, sometimes in front of mirrors, with large vessels placed in the corners to encourage formal comparisons of the objects and to compound the splendorous effect.21 The Porcelain Cabinet at Charlottenburg Palace, designed by Eosander von Göthe for Friedrich I, exemplifies these display methods. The room’s chinoiserie design complements the showcased Chinese and Japanese ceramics to emphasize the prestige of Frederick’s elevation from elector of Brandenburg to king of Prussia (r. 1701–13).22 Both Friedrich I’s and Charles III’s rooms utilized mirrors to reflect the sheen of the porcelain objects, give multiple views, and amplify the space. The porcelain cabinets at Arnstadt Palace in Germany (built 1734–35) and Eggenberg Palace in Graz, Austria (ca. 1735) also illustrate popular display strategies. In these cabinets from the 1730s, porcelain objects are affixed to the walls in a more permanent fashion. Yonan addresses this tendency: As the seventeenth century gave way to the eighteenth a shift took place from rooms in which things are displayed—a heap up of objects—to a room that is itself a display—a transforming of material into something fixed, concrete, and mostly immobile. That change is characterized by the lessening popularity of consoles, freestanding pieces of furniture rather like modern shelving units, in favor of building porcelain displays into the permanent structure of a room’s wainscoting.23 This shift in interior design is taken even further by the Aranjuez Porcelain Room, in which individual porcelain pieces were not just arranged systematically Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 39 along the wall, but porcelain was used as the very material of the room itself, pushing the decorative limits of the ceramic medium. Through this novel use of the material, the Aranjuez room offered the young king an opportunity to surpass traditional methods of porcelain display, employ a technically advanced method of construction, and embrace a modern approach to interior design. The display of porcelain collections communicated elite power and taste. In regard to Friedrich I, Filip Suchomel writes, “Porcelain was for Friedrich a symbol of wealth, power and prosperity and he therefore placed the salon [porcelain room] in the official area of the palace in which he received the most important visits.” 24 In Aranjuez, Charles likewise used his porcelain as the setting for his official business—while adding the connotation of the modern via his opulent display method. In fact, porcelain was itself such an effective status symbol that Charles founded his own factory, the Buen Retiro Porcelain Factory in Madrid, fondly known as “La China,” to create the porcelain used in the room. As Andrew Schulz states, plans “were presented to Charles III on December 19, 1759, and construction was completed by May 22, 1760, a couple of months before his official public entry into Madrid,” indicating the importance the king placed on immediately establishing the factory.25 Not only did the factory produce porcelain to decorate Charles’s residences, it also created objects to serve as diplomatic gifts and allowed him to compete with similar products from Asia and other recently established European factories. The gifting of porcelain added to the circulation of luxury products among noble collections and embodied Charles’s heightened status as the disseminator of this elite material. Charles had prior experience with porcelain production. During his tenure as King of Naples and the Two Sicilies from 1735 until 1759, Charles founded the Capodimonte Porcelain Factory in 1743 at the Royal Wood in Naples, which created mostly “table services, decorative objects, and small-scale figurative sculptures,” several with chinoiserie themes.26 The Buen Retiro factory followed a similar plan and method established in Capodimonte to produce soft-paste porcelain.27 Upon leaving Naples in 1759, Charles and Queen Maria Amalia traveled to Madrid with the factory’s entourage of more than fifty employees and their families, materials including nearly five tons of porcelain paste, and some eighty-eight tons of equipment, including molds from the Capodimonte factory to be used in the Buen Retiro factory.28 Some of the court’s early records in the Archivo General de Palacio about the factory document the needs, responsibilities, and salaries of the transported workers. In one letter from 1763, the director of the factory, Juan Tomás Bonicelli, made a list of workers and materials needed to fix a part of the “Quarto del Rey de ese Palacio el Gabinete de Porcelana,” again identifying the porcelain “cabinet” as Charles III’s “room.” 29 Having just completed a Porcelain Room in 1759 for the Royal Palace at Portici (1738–42)30 that served as Maria Amalia’s boudoir, also modeled by Gricci, the royal couple did not have long to appreciate its grandeur and wanted to re-create a version in Spain (fig. 6.). The Portici space remains the prototype for the Aranjuez interior, but with vital differences: as well as the porcelain ceiling, the Aranjuez room has a 40 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Fig. 6 Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, Porcelain Room for the Royal Palace at Portici, Italy, 1738–42. Relocated to the National Museum of Capodimonte in Naples. Photo: Luciano Pedicini, 2000. Alinari / Art Resource, NY. more vibrant color palette, larger figures and animals in heightened relief, and a more energized and complex composition that foregrounds avian and botanical motifs. 31 The difference in use of the porcelain rooms—boudoir versus outer office—also supports the idea that the iconography at Aranjuez had political intentions. Although Maria Amalia died in 1760 and never experienced the finished Porcelain Room at Aranjuez, porcelain had personal significance for the queen, who was a descendent of the monarch who founded the first European factory to manufacture hard-paste porcelain. Maria Amalia married Charles in 1738 and was the daughter of Augustus III of Poland, elector of Saxony, and the granddaughter of Augustus the Strong, the founder of the Meissen Porcelain Factory in 1710.32 The Meissen factory was established to serve the needs of the king and his court. Due to its importance for royal gift-giving, Meissen porcelain generated a competitive spirit among other European nations to found their own factories.33 The queen was no doubt aware of porcelain’s great prestige. She entered the royal marriage with a dowry containing Meissen porcelain and encouraged the king to launch competing factories for his own use and his domain’s esteem.34 In fact, it has been suggested that Maria Amalia was not only the inspiration for the porcelain rooms in the Portici and Aranjuez palaces, but also their instigator.35 According to Francesco Divenuto, it was Maria Amalia Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 41 who opted for porcelain walls over the more typical use of lacquer paneling, cloth, or paper in the first room in Portici.36 Charles III had another royal link with an interest in porcelain collecting and production: the former Habsburg king Philip II, who amassed an enormous collection of items from Asia, including a sizable number of Chinese books housed at his library in the Escorial and numerous gifts of folding screens and lacquerware from Japanese emissaries who visited Madrid in 1584.37 Philip’s devotion to porcelain was exceptional: during his reign, he assembled a collection of more than three thousand porcelain objects.38 In his position as king of Spain and Portugal between 1581 and 1598, Philip had direct access to the circulation of goods on the trade routes, allowing his Asian collection to flourish. He provided an optimal model for Charles III, who did not acquire objects simply to keep up with trends but sought to outdo his predecessors and his contemporaries. As the king responsible for the first building campaign at the palace of Aranjuez, Philip II was a natural prototype for Charles III. The Porcelain Room and the Buen Retiro factory allowed Charles to surpass Philip. Charles III’s youngest brother, Prince Luis Antonio Jaime, Count of Chinchón, may have provided another aristocratic influence. The prince was an enthusiastic collector of art and artifacts of natural history, and he was thus a model, if not a rival, in the bid to establish collections that reflected both royal taste and modern scientific interests. His “Cabinet of Sciences” and painting collection were located in his apartments at the Madrid Royal Palace.39 Luis’s collecting habits also influenced his artistic patronage, as evidenced in his billiard room, referred to as the “Cabinet of Birds.” This space featured a painted ceiling of local, migratory, and exotic birds that were probably painted after the collection of preserved birds displayed in the room itself.40 Similarly, Charles III’s mother, Isabel de Farnesio, was also an avid collector, with a particular interest in porcelain and Asian objects, such as fans and folding screens, to suit her Asian-themed interiors.41 At the Royal Palace of San Ildefonso de La Granja near Segovia, she commissioned two lacquered rooms, a dressing room and bedroom, for the suites she shared with Philip V.42 Lacquer was a highly prized medium, intimately associated with the Far East, and rooms finished in this material derive their sumptuousness from the sheen of the wood’s dark polish and polychromy. These rooms, like the Porcelain Room in Aranjuez, revel in the rich luminosity of the exotic material, using the practice of collection and display to highlight the possession of eastern luxury in Spanish royal apartments. Like his predecessors and according to courtly fashion, Charles III amassed an enormous collection of Asian porcelain during his reign.43 With the development of his factory, he furthermore developed porcelain production and taste in Spain with locally made products able simultaneously to evoke an exotic heritage and a sense of national pride. The Aranjuez Porcelain Room’s elaborate display of local porcelain epitomized Charles’s high-status collection that allowed him to reference his royal connections and to display his own modern, sophisticated tastes while conducting political business. 42 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Chinoiserie in Spain: Expressions of Bourbon Imperialism The part of Charles’s identity perhaps best suited to the political function of the Porcelain Room as public office was his role as an imperial ruler influencing trade between, and enacting reform of, global territories. The office was a place where royal business was conducted and where Charles’s kingly identity was crafted and performed. This consideration is evoked by the exoticism of the material of porcelain as well as the use and iconography of Chinese motifs. The role played by the exotic in the formation of new identities and the performative potential of chinoiserie in elite spaces has been noted by Christopher Johns, who states, “Chinoiserie was a major player in the performance of monarchy in eighteenth-century Europe.”44 As a powerful strategy of display that was extremely popular across Europe, chinoiserie was “both chic and fashionable” and also “perceived to be cosmopolitan and progressive.”45 Loosely based on Asian models, chinoiserie was never understood to be an authentic representation of the Far East. The Porcelain Room at Aranjuez shares many features with other eighteenthcentury chinoiserie interiors, such as Christopher Huet’s singeries in French châteaux, the Porcelain Cabinet from Charlottenburg Palace in Berlin (1706), and the Lacquer Bedroom from the Royal Palace of San Ildefonso de La Granja (1735–36) designed by Filippo Juvarra for Charles III’s parents—all of which include playful deployment of Asian themes, objects, and materials.46 However, the room in Aranjuez surpasses these examples through its exuberance and its multiple, layered uses of porcelain. The representation of individual porcelain goods enriches the interplay between porcelain as representation and its use as the medium of the very room itself. In one vignette on the southern wall, a woman stands next to a tall porcelain vase rendered with a pink-and-green floral motif, a blue base, and gold trim (fig. 7). Two young boys, perhaps her sons, sit in front of a palm tree on a small lacquered chest with a gold bell, items that would have graced any European collection of oriental artifacts at the time. In fact, one of the boys seems to have pulled back a cloth to reveal this precious object, and the two boys lean into one another with their mouths open in conversation or song. Porcelain and lacquer are two sumptuous materials emblematic of global trade that were also employed in interior design. Throughout the Porcelain Room, one material substitutes for another realistically rendered substance—porcelain for silk, or lacquer, or wood, or feathers—a calculated play between surface and substance, and between object and representation. The artfulness of the glazed ceramic modeling in its replication of other exotic materials, like printed cottons or embroidered silk, follows standard chinoiserie appropriations but does so in a virtuoso manner.47 The objects rendered so exquisitely in porcelain recall their exotic origins while aggrandizing their new European site. The exoticism of the motifs goes beyond the Chinese alone; some of the hats, with flowers, ostrich feathers, or fur, are more reminiscent of Turkish dress.48 The combination of Chinese and Turkish motifs is not unusual in eighteenth-century European interiors, pointing to the artistic trope of playful Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 43 Fig. 7 Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, detail of southern wall, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. appropriation common in chinoiserie decorative programs (fig. 8). As Tania Solweig Shamy argues, such a visual fusion “does not necessarily illustrate a lack of geographical knowledge, but a willingness to conflate foreign peoples with a vocabulary of design elements that expressed ‘exoticism.’”49 But the Aranjuez Porcelain Room’s design also suggests hybridity in its very materiality—its use of porcelain connects it to the historic manufacture of this ceramic in the Far East, but its Spanish creation in Charles III’s own factory is distinctly European. The various natural and decorative chinoiserie motifs throughout the room offer sensory pleasures of a light and diverting nature, but since this room served in an official capacity at court, they are more than just rococo whimsy; they provide a vibrant setting for affairs of state in which colonial policies were shaped and enacted. Although China was not a Spanish colony, the Spanish monarchy had privileged access to the luxury goods manufactured in the East Indies via the Philippines. The objects rendered in porcelain operate as more than just decorative and narrative motifs: they represent the circulation of goods between Spain and Asia and thus articulate a key part of Charles III’s identity. In their Spanish context, the chinoiserie motifs allude to some of the major subjects of the day: empire, colonial reform, and commerce. 44 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Fig. 8 Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, detail of western wall, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. The chinoiserie design and porcelain framework operate as the architectural and thematic backdrop for conducting business at court and establishing monarchical legitimacy and engagement with the empire in the East. They may impress the occupant and visitor in their artful renderings, but they also point to the king’s foreign strategies. According to one commentator, Charles III was the first Spanish king who did not “contemplate Asia as an immense place for exploitation and evangelization,” although he certainly wanted to maintain control of the Philippines and protect Spanish interests in the East. 50 Charles III ascended the Spanish throne in 1759, at a moment when the Spanish Empire was being contested during the Seven Years’ War. This global conflict threatened the historic Manila Galleon trade route that sent silver from New Granada and New Spain to China via the Philippines, where some of that wealth was exchanged for goods like spices, silks, and porcelain that were sent back to Spain and its American colonies. 51 The new king and his advisors recognized that the antiquated system of imperial administration needed attention, so they established new ports and trading companies, loosened regulations, and encouraged free trade. 52 The court “sought to make each colonial area more self-sufficient. In the Philippines that meant ending the 200-year-old Mexican subsidy and establishing a government-regulated monopoly of tobacco, cotton, indigo, abaca, coffee, and sugar.” 53 These reforms rendered the administration more efficient but, more important, were intended to bring in more wealth to the court and state, thus enabling the grand building schemes envisaged by Charles. 54 Although the porcelain used by Gricci at Aranjuez was made in Europe, the room relates to this historic interchange among Spaniards, colonists, and Asian Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 45 merchants, and to the broader context of Spanish trade and colonization. The Spanish and Portuguese dominated trade in the East Indies in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These two competitors signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, in which Pope Alexander VI divided newly discovered lands in the East Indies between them. On the heels of the Portuguese, who had claimed the Moluccas, the Spanish actively set their sights on other islands in the area for clove, pepper, and cinnamon. 55 Capitalizing on this competitive spirit, the Basque navigator Miguel López de Legazpi established the first Spanish settlement in the Philippines in 1565, effectively inaugurating the trans-Pacific Galleon trade. William Lytle Schurz highlights Legazpi’s vital role in the foundation of the Galleon trade and in his “conquest and organization of the Philippines” to initiate Spain’s colonial empire in the East Indies. 56 Realizing the potential of Manila Bay for commercial profit and defense, Legazpi made Manila the capital in 1571. Merchants from all over Asia came to trade their products at Manila, and the Chinese who resided in the Philippine capital lived in an enclosed district (the Parián) within the city. This mercantile exchange benefited many, especially since the Spanish did not trade directly with the Chinese in China until the 1760s, when Charles III enacted free trade policies. In 1762, during the Seven Years’ War, a British naval squadron under the command of Brigadier-General William Draper, successfully conquered Manila. This swift occupation marked a dramatic moment in the fight for possessions in the East.57 With the end of the Seven Years’ War and the Treaty of Paris signed (1763), Britain gained many new territories, but the Spanish were successful in winning back the Philippines. 58 This episode pointed to weaknesses within the Spanish imperial infrastructure, and many of Charles III’s policies sought to restructure outdated programs, strengthen and expand governance at home and abroad, and reduce foreign threats to Spain’s colonial interests.59 Some of the most important tactics implemented were the reevaluation of the Galleon system, the promotion of a direct trade route between Spain and Manila, the creation of free trade policies, and the founding of trading companies, all of which sought to forge greater economic productivity within the Philippines and to foster better ties between Spain and China.60 As the inheritors of Spain’s empire, the Bourbons sought to modernize the vast imperial operations. In an international context in which several European countries were flexing their imperial muscle, the Porcelain Room might be seen to have a decidedly topical meaning as celebrating a crucial political victory within the context of the king’s favorite residence. Although the Bourbons could not claim that they had established Spain’s colonies, they could employ visual means to promote themselves as the rightful heirs. Gabriel Paquette stresses that “emulation” and “envy” were two principal conditions of international rivalry typical of eighteenthcentury geopolitical struggle.61 The Porcelain Room in Aranjuez is a chief location for such rivalry in its dual capacity as a source of pleasure and an example of Bourbon strength and legitimacy. Certainly, no other porcelain room could match its technical virtuosity and decorative ingenuity. Charles III would obviously benefit from these connotations of the room that served to underscore his role of facilitator of trade in the Spanish Empire. 46 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Fig. 9 (left) Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, detail of western wall, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. Fig. 10 (right) Giuseppe Gricci and workshop, detail of western wall, Porcelain Room, Royal Palace, Aranjuez, Spain, 1760–65. Copyright © Patrimonio Nacional. Beyond the links of the exotic chinoiserie style to the East, many of the scenes in the Aranjuez Porcelain Room engage directly with mercantilist themes. For example, in a central vignette between two mirrors on the western wall of the room, four figures stand under a cupola engaged in a transaction (fig. 9). On one woman’s hand a parrot is perched, while the man standing next to her holds a bag, presumably filled with coins in exchange for the bird. A smaller figure, possibly her child, leans on the woman, and a fourth figure, perhaps the man’s assistant, kneels down holding another bird. To the right of this scene and situated between a mirror and the door, a group of three figures are playing musical instruments (fig. 10). An older man with a long beard is seated playing an instrument with two bells. His black robe and hat are accented by gold-and-white feathers. A small figure shakes a rod with bells attached. The central figure, wearing a mint-green robe with delicately painted flowers and Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 47 a pink sash, strikes a large bell hanging above. His sinuous pose is elegantly complemented by a tree that echoes his curving form. In order to bring out the interaction among the figural groupings, the solitary figure to the right of the door looks toward the figures making music (see fig. 2). Such a composition places viewers directly in the center of this exchange and encourages them to contemplate the different scenes, generating a theatrical, multisensory space for the real political theater taking place in the king’s room. Because of Spain’s historic trade with Asia via the Philippines, Spanish examples of chinoiserie carried specific and topical associations, especially since the country’s relationship to China was also undergoing change. The Porcelain Room did not simply follow earlier prototypes of frolicking figures dressed in fanciful Chinese costumes or imitate traditional modes of displaying porcelain collections: it outdid most previous examples of chinoiserie in its use of locally manufactured porcelain to render oriental themes as a means of demonstrating the court’s cultural status at a pivotal and bellicose moment in Charles III’s early reign and in his broader undertakings at Aranjuez. As Alice Wilson Frothingham states, in his porcelain endeavors Charles III wished to “surpass the rooms that every king or princeling of the German electorates, during the 1720s and 1730s, considered requisite for showing his Oriental ceramics.”62 Indeed, as Álvarez de Quindós noted, the Porcelain Room “has no equal.”63 Its singularity points to its particular Spanish context and expression, which, I would argue, are vital for untangling the interior’s multilayered meanings. Aranjuez was not the main seat of royal authority; that rested in the Royal Palace at Madrid. But, as an official residence, it still operated as a regal venue to express Charles III’s identity. To that end Charles put to work a specific program as soon as he arrived in Spain that tied his interests to contemporary notions about natural history, collecting, porcelain, and kingly identity, all of which suggest his desire to embody the fundamental ideals and characteristics of an enlightened monarch. Couched in the dual languages of chinoiserie and the modern style, which are often regarded as merely whimsical, the room’s function as a formal space for government business tempers and complicates such pleasures. Given the official purpose of the space, with its political undertones, the room’s decorative program takes on greater authority at the heart of the Spanish empire, so recently threatened during the Seven Years’ War. But the gravity of the interior’s political implications does not negate the room’s sensory delights. Both the political and the pleasurable would appear to have had equal merit in shaping the king’s identity as innovator, collector, and imperial strategist. The room’s allusions to China had specific implications and meaning for Charles III, who could enact his position as king in an idealized performative manner to legitimate his rule, spur reform, rival his predecessors, and cultivate an image of absolute imperial might. The Porcelain Room at Aranjuez, therefore, offers a brilliant combination of technical virtuosity and exotic imagery in a modern stylistic vocabulary that nevertheless reveals something of the political uncertainties of kingship, international trade, and imperial rivalries. 48 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). Tara Zanardi Tara Zanardi is associate professor of art history at Hunter College and author of Framing Majismo: Art and Royal Identity in Eighteenth-Century Spain (2016). She is currently writing a book-length manuscript on the Porcelain Room. 1 Balbina Martínez Caviro, Porcelana del Buen Retiro, Escultura (Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez, Del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1973), 18. 2 Carmen Mañueco Santurtún, “La Real Fábrica de Porcelana del Buen Retiro a través de sus documentos (1760–1808),” in Manufactura del Buen Retiro: 1760–1808 (Madrid: Museo Arqueológico Nacional, Ministerio de Educación y Cultura; Comunidad de Madrid, Consejería de Educación y Cultura, 1999), 74. 3 Alice Wilson Frothingham, Capodimonte and Buen Retiro Porcelains: Period of Charles III (New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1955), 16–17. 4 Juan Antonio Álvarez de Quindós y Baena, Descripción histórica del Real Bosque y Casa de Aranjuez (Madrid: Imprenta Real, 1804), 203. 5 Leticia Sánchez Hernández states that the room’s compositions derived from paintings by Boucher for Louis XV; see The Majesty of Spain: Royal Collections from the Museo del Prado and the Patrimonio Nacional (Jackson: Mississippi Commission for International Cultural Exchange, 2001), 210. 6 For example, Hugh Honour, “G. D. Tiepolo and the Aranjuez Porcelain Room,” The Connoisseur 146 (July 1967): 183–85. 7 Archivo General de Palacio (AP RSBR 11768 2). The report is dated Madrid, 14 July 1814. The “Relación de los efectos encontrados en el desmonte de las ruinas de la fábrica de porcelana 1814” contains a list of objects found in the factory’s rubble, including seven hundred French bayonets, as a testament to the edifice’s temporary purpose during the war. 8 See Francisco de Laiglesia, Catálogo de la colección de porcelanas del Buen Retiro del señor D. Francisco de Laiglesia (Madrid: Tip. de la Revista de Arch., Bibl. y Museos, 1908); and Manuel Pérez-Villamil y García, Artes é industrias del Buen Retiro: La fábrica de la china, el laboratorio de piedras duras y mosaico (Madrid: Est. Tip. “Sucesores de Rivadeneyra,” 1904). 9 Alden Cavanaugh and Michael E. Yonan, “Introduction,” in The Cultural Aesthetics of EighteenthCentury Porcelain (Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010), 4. 10 See Denise Amy Baxter and Meredith Martin, Architectural Space in Eighteenth-Century Europe: Constructing Identities and Interiors (Farnham, UK, and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010); and Katie Scott, “Framing Ambition: The Interior Politics of Mme de Pompadour,” in “Between Luxury and the Everyday: The Decorative Arts in Eighteenth-Century France,” ed. Katie Scott and Deborah Cherry, special issue, Art History 28, no. 2 (April 2005): 248–90. 11 Álvarez de Quindós, Descripción histórica del Real Bosque, 203. 12 Henry Swinburne, Travels through Spain, 1775 and 1776 (London: J. Davis, 1779), 2:129–30. 13 Ibid., 2:134. 14 See Ernest Lluch Martín and Lluís Argemí i d’Abadal, Agronomía y fisiocracia en España (1750–1820) (Valencia: Institución Alfonso el Magnánimo, 1985). 15 Carlos Gómez-Centurión, “Treasures Fit for a King: King Charles III of Spain’s Indian Elephants,” Journal of the History of Collections 22, no. 2 (2010): 30. The author continues: “The decision to house these specimens here was integral with the monarch’s intense activity on the estate, with the intention of converting it into a model agricultural and livestock operation, according to the physiocratic ideas in vogue at the time.” 16 Ibid. 17 Swinburne, Travels through Spain, 130. 18 Álvarez de Quindós states, “Este Monarca como tan inclinado á todo género de agricultura deseoso de promoverla en su Reyno”; Descripción histórica, 226. 19 Gómez-Centurión, “Treasures Fit for a King,” 29–32. Gómez-Centurión notes that Charles III acquired his first elephant in 1742 while he was sovereign of Naples as a gift from the Ottoman sultan, Mahmud I. 20 On the collecting and display of Chinese porcelain, see Rosemary Kerr, “Early Export Ceramics,” in Chinese Export Art and Design, ed. Craig Clunas (London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1987); and A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe: Display, Acquisition and Boundaries, ed. Johanna Ilmakunnas and Jon Stobart (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). See also Robert Finlay, The Pilgrim Art: Cultures of Porcelain in World History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010). 21 Oliver Impey, “Porcelain for Palaces,” in Porcelain for Palaces: The Fashion for Japan in Europe 1650– 1750, ed. John Ayers, Oliver Impey, and J. V. G. Mallet (London: Oriental Ceramic Society; distributed by P. Wilson Publishers, 1990), 60. 22 Filip Suchomel, 300 Treasures: Chinese Porcelain in the Wallenstein, Schwarzenberg & Lichnowsky Family Collections (Prague: Academy of Arts, Architecture and Design in Prague, 2015), 42. Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 49 23 Michael E. Yonan, “Igneous Architecture: Porcelain, Natural Philosophy, and the Rococo cabinet chinois,” in Cavanaugh and Yonan, The Cultural Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Porcelain, 72. 24 Suchomel, 300 Treasures, 42. 25 Andrew Schulz, “‘The Porcelain of the Moors’: The Alhambra Vases in Enlightenment Spain,” Hispanic Research Journal 9, no. 5 (December 2008): 404. See also Juan F. Riaño, The Industrial Arts of Spain (London: Chapman and Hall, 1879), 211. 26 Schulz, “The Porcelain of the Moors,” 404. Both the Capodimonte and Buen Retiro porcelain factories used the fleur-de-lis stamp. See Martínez Caviro, Porcelana del Buen Retiro, 34. Mañueco Santurtún, “La presencia de Oriente en la manufactura del Buen Retiro,” in Oriente en Palacio: Tesoros asiáticos en las colecciones reales (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2003), 331. 27 Hard-paste porcelain had been perfected by the Chinese in the Five Dynasties Period (907–60). At Meissen, this technique was replicated under the auspices of Johann Friedrich Böttger (1682–1719). Other porcelain factories, such as Capodimonte and Buen Retiro, utilized soft-paste porcelain, which does not include kaolin. 28 “Since the king considered the Capodimonte factory to be his own personal property rather than that of the state, he ordered the destruction of anything that could not be sent to Madrid.” See Schulz, “‘The Porcelain of the Moors,’” 404. 29 Archivo General de Palacio (AP Aranjuez Caja 14220). 30 The Porcelain Room at Portici, which cost 70,000 ducats, was moved to the Capodimonte Palace in 1865. See Rollo Charles, Continental Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century (London: Ernest Benn, University of Toronto Press, 1964), 181–82. 31 Mañueco Santurtún argues that the figures in the Aranjuez room display a greater sense of narrative and that the modeling of the figures and their clothing articulate a more convincing pictorial realism; “La presencia de Oriente,” 336. 32 1738 marks another important date in Maria Amalia’s life. Her father, Augustus III, assumed the Polish crown after the War of Polish Succession (1733–38). During this war, Charles gained command of the kingdom of Naples in 1734. 33 As Maureen Cassidy-Geiger states, gifts of Meissen porcelain brought “prestige to the king and pleasure to the recipient”; “Porcelain and Prestige: Princely Gifts and ‘White Gold’ from Meissen,” in Fragile Diplomacy: Meissen Porcelain for European Courts ca. 1710–63, ed. Maureen Cassidy-Geiger (New York: Bard Graduate Center; New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 14–17. 34 See Susan F. Rossen and Susan L. Caroselli, eds., The Golden Age of Naples: Art and Civilization under the Bourbons, 1734–1805 (Detroit and Chicago: Detroit Institute of Art and Art Institute of Chicago, 1981), 2:384; and Maureen Cassidy-Geiger, “Princes and Porcelain on the Grand Tour of Italy,” in Fragile Diplomacy, 212–18. When Charles III opened the Capodimonte factory, he attempted without success to employ some of the workers from Meissen. Frothingham suggests that the Neapolitan artisans at Capodimonte strove to imitate Meissen wares, including chinoiserie themes and “Oriental” shapes; see Capodimonte and Buen Retiro, 2–9. Upon the birth of her son in 1747, Maria Amalia’s mother gifted her a Meissen toilette service; Selma Schwartz and Jeffrey Munger, “Gifts of Meissen Porcelain to the French Court, 1728–50,” in Fragile Diplomacy, 161. 35 Honour, “G. D. Tiepolo and the Aranjuez Porcelain Room,” 183. 36 Francesco Divenuto, “The Role of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony in the Planning of the Royal Palace of Caserta,” in Creating Women: Representation, Self-Presentation, and Agency in the Renaissance, ed. Manuela Scarci (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2013), 189. 37 Donald F. Lach, Asia in the Making of Europe (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1965), 13–14. 38 Marina Alfonso Mola and Carlos Martínez Shaw, “El Galeón de Manila y los orígenes de un mestizaje artístico,” in Oriente en Palacio, 88. See also Alfonso Mola and Martínez Shaw, “Los tesoros asiáticos en las colecciones reales españolas” (13–25); and Annemarie Jordan Gschwend y Almudena Pérez de Tudela, “Exotica Habsburgica: La Casa de Austria y las Colecciones Exóticas en el Renacimiento temprano” (27–43) in the same catalogue. 39 In the sixth volume of Viaje de España (1772–94), Antonio Ponz described Luis’s Cabinet of Sciences and his collection of paintings. See Viaja de España, en que se da noticia de las cosas más apreciables, y dignas de saberse, que hay en ella (Madrid: D. Joaquín Ibarra, 1776–88). 40 Artists could have also observed collections of live birds kept in various royal palaces, including at Aranjuez. See Francisco Tomé de la Vega, “El ‘Gabinete de los Pájaros’ del infante Don Luis,” Reales Sitios: Revista del Patrimonio Nacional 137 (1998): 11–12. For more information on Luis’s patronage and collecting activities, see Goya y el infante Don Luis, El exilio y el reino: Arte y ciencia en la época de la ilustración española, ed. Francisco Calvo Serraller (Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 2013). 41 As Teresa Lavalle-Cobo states, Isabel de Farnesio’s final inventory (completed upon her death in 1766) lists the objects in her collection, their location at the San Ildefonso Palace, and their value in reales de vellón; see “El coleccionismo oriental de Isabel de Farnesio,” in Oriente en Palacio, 212–13. 42 The queen’s dressing room was built by Andrea Procaccini from 1734 to 1736, and the monarchs’ shared bedroom was designed by Filippo Juvarra from 1735 to 1736. See María Soledad García Fernández, “Muebles y paneles decorativos de laca en el siglo XVIII,” in Oriente en Palacio, 341. 50 West 86th V 25 N1 This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). For information on Isabel de Farnesio’s collecting practices, see Cinta Krahe Noblett, “El coleccionismo de porcelana China en España: De curiosidad real a mercadería de exportación,” in Orientando la Mirada: Arte asiático en las colecciones públicas madrileñas (Madrid: Conde Duque, 2009): 23–34. Krahe Noblett argues that Isabel de Farnesio, along with the French architect and decorator René Carlier, introduced the style for chinoiserie in Spain. 43 Matilde Rosa Arias Estéve, “Suntuosa Ensoñación: El prestigio de las exóticas curiosidades de exportación,” in Orientando la mirada, 52. 44 Christopher Johns, “Chinoiserie in Piedmont: An International Language of Diplomacy and Modernity,” in Turin and the British in the Age of the Grand Tour, ed. Karin E. Wolfe and Paola Bianchi (Cambridge and London: Cambridge University Press and the British School at Rome, 2017), 3. See also Katie Scott, “Playing Games with Otherness: Watteau’s Chinese Cabinet at the Château de la Muette,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 66 (2003): 190 and 207; and Yonan, “Igneous Architecture,” 67. 45 Johns, “Chinoiserie in Piedmont,” 2–3. 46 Recent publications on chinoiserie include Christopher Johns, China and the Church: Chinoiserie in Global Context (Oakland: University of California Press, 2016); Stacey Sloboda, Chinoiserie: Commerce and Critical Ornament in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2014); and Francesco Moreno, Chinoiserie: The Evolution of the Oriental Style in Italy from the 14th to the 19th Century (Florence: Centro Di, 2009). 47 Abby Sue Fisher, “Trade Textiles: Asia and New Spain,” in Asia and Spanish America: Trans-Pacific Artistic and Cultural Exchange, 1500–1850, ed. Donna Pierce and Ronald Otsuka (Denver: Mayer Center for Pre-Columbian and Spanish Colonial Art at the Denver Art Museum, 2009), 180. 48 Frothingham, Capodimonte and Buen Retiro Porcelains, 27. 49 Tania Solweig Shamy, “Frederick the Great’s Porcelain Diversion: The Chinese Tea House at Sanssouci” (PhD diss., McGill University, 2009), 40. 50 Carmen García-Ormaechea, “La porcelana del palacio real,” in Oriente en Palacio, 226. 51 See Stanley J. Stein and Barbara H. Stein, Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); and Jack Turner, Spice: The History of a Temptation (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). 52 Although these reforms began under the first two Spanish Bourbon kings, in 1765 the Manila Galleon network was complemented by a direct trade route between Cádiz and Manila that Spaniards traversed via the Cape of Good Hope. 53 Russell K. Skowronek, “The Spanish Philippines: Archaeological Perspectives on Colonial Econom ics and Society,” International Journal of Historical Archeology 2, no. 1 (1998): 49. 54 Although the “Real Compañía de Filipinas” (Royal Philippine Company) was not established until 1785, the model of an independent trading company had existed since 1728 in the Royal Guipuzcoana Company of Caracas. Plans for this reform of trade from Manila were introduced in 1765 by Dom Josef di Perreira Viana. See W. L. Schurz, “The Royal Philippine Company,” Hispanic American Historical Review 3, no. 4 (Nov. 1920): 491–508; and Lin Yu-Ju and Madeleine Zelin, eds., Merchant Communities in Asia, 1600–1980 (London: Routledge, 2015), 127–31. 55 See George Bryan Souza, The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630–1754 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 56 William Lytle Schurz, The Manila Galleon (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1939), 22. 57 Geoffrey W. Rice examines the relationship between Britain and Spain during this period. See “Great Britain, the Manila Ransom, and the First Falkland Islands Dispute with Spain, 1766,” International History Review 2, no. 3 (July 1980): 387. 58 After the seizure of both Havana and Manila, Charles III sent José de Gálvez to implement some of his proposals. From 1765 to 1771 he overhauled colonial tax collection and customs, set up a militia system, and established a new viceroyalty in Buenos Aires as part of his mission. Ruth MacKay, “Lazy, Improvident People”: Myth and Reality in the Writing of Spanish History (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2006), 202–3. 59 Gabriel Paquette calls Caroline (i.e., Charles III and Charles IV) reform “regalism,” since the state’s function in society and the monarchy’s role in the international order were expanded; see Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform in Spain and Its Empire, 1759–1808 (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 4–7. 60 Marina Alfonso Mola and Carlos Martínez-Shaw, “El acceso directo a China,” in La ruta española a China, ed. Martínez-Shaw and Alfonso Mola (Madrid: Ediciones El Viso, 2007), 203. 61 Paquette, Enlightenment, Governance, and Reform, 31. 62 Frothingham, Capodimonte and Buen Retiro Porcelains, 16. 63 He states that the cabinet “no tiene igual”; Álvarez de Quindós, Descripción histórica, 203. Kingly Performance and Artful Innovation This content downloaded from 198.168.106.200 on July 18, 2018 13:58:44 PM All use subject to University of Chicago Press Terms and Conditions (http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/t-and-c). 51