Corrado Giaquinto

Likely thanks to this commission’s success, in 1752, Giaquinto was invited by Ferdinand VI to replace the recently deceased Jacopo Amigoni as the king’s painter. The arts in Spain flourished with the Bourbon dynasty’s ascent to the throne in 1700, and Giaquinto worked both for Ferdinand VI and his successor Charles III. Their wives, Barbara of Braganza and Maria Amalia of Saxony, respectively, were also interested in the visual arts, as was the queen mother Elisabetta Farnese. Architectural work on the royal residences, beginning with the building of the new Palacio Real following designs by Filippo Juvarra were underway, while further new palaces were constructed and older ones updated. Under the Bourbons a tapestry manufactory was established, and the king also founded an art academy, later the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. This lively culture of artistic patronage in Madrid surely attracted Amigoni, Giaquinto, and later Tiepolo to assume roles at the Bourbon court.

The decoration of so many new and renovated palaces were fundamental projects assigned to these artists, with paintings and tapestries, particularly the production of cartoons for mythological, historical, and allegorical weavings, being of primary importance. Giaquinto, however, frequently clashed with the architects, and left Spain permanently for Naples in 1762; the king replaced him with Tiepolo and Mengs. Nevertheless, once he had returned to Naples, Giaquinto continued this activity for the Bourbon monarchs.

In his Diccionario histórico of 1800, the art historian and critic Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez praised Giaquinto’s skill and subtle use of colour and concluded referring to his frescoes, although this is also true of his work in other media, that they ‘illustrate a creative genius, and extraordinary spirit, and a new and admirable taste,’ attesting both to the artist’s singular talent as well as the artistically vivacious milieu of Bourbon Spain.