The son of a modest painter of the same name, Mariano Salvador Maella was born in Valencia in 1739, although he moved to Madrid with his family while still a child. There, his father placed him In the workshop of sculptor Felipe de Castro. At Castro’s suggestion, he entered the Real Academia de San Fernando in 1752, receiving painting prizes that bear witness to both his quality and his style’s compatibility with the ideals defended by that institution under the direction of Antonio González Velázquez. By 1759, Maella was 20 years old and living in Cádiz (almost certainly with his family, and possibly with the idea of travelling to America to make his fortune). That year, he moved to Rome, alone and at his own expense, as the institution had not seen fit to assign him a study grant. From there, however, he requested an extraordinary grant from the Academia de San Fernando to complete his education in Rome where, by the mid-eighteenth century, the influence of Corrado Giaquinto and the late Rococo were gradually giving way to emerging neoclassical ideals. His Academy stipend of 4 reales a month was sufficient, as he also enjoyed the patronage of José Torrubia, an author and scientist of the Franciscan Order. Following Torrubia’s death, Maella received a decisive grant of 400 ducats from the Academia de San Fernando, which was, in fact, equivalent to official study grants.

An interesting sketchbook from Maella’s time in Rome, now at the Museo del Prado, contains a notable group of copies that reveal the young artist’s interest in precisely registering a variety of classical sculptures and paintings, as well as details of figures from churches and palaces by Renaissance or seventeenthcentury Roman classicist artists.

After returning to Spain in 1764, he was appointed a member of the Academia de San Fernando, but the turning point in his career came with his appointment as court painter, under the direction of Anton Raphael Mengs. This led to numerous decorative projects for the Royal Palace, as well as other royal commissions, including ideas for cartoons at the Royal Tapestry Factory and a major part of the monumental group of frescoes for the cloister at Toledo Cathedral. He combined his career at court with activity at the Academia de San Fernando, where he was appointed Assistant Director of Painting in 1782, Director of Painting in 1794, and General Director of that institution in 1795, following Francisco Bayeu’s death.

Maella finally became First Painter to the King in 1799 — at the same time as Francisco de Goya, who had served him since 1785. He had also served the monarch in other ways, drawing up inventories of the royal collection and directing a team of painters employed as restorers to maintain the king’s important collection of paintings in proper condition. Moreover, from the very beginning, Maella played an important role as a painter of portraits of the king and other court personalites. There, his brilliant and colourful technique and his idea of perfection closely reflect Mengs’s models.

With the new century, Maella began to lose the support of his patrons, of influential public figures such as Godoy, who was more interested in Goya, and even of the monarchs. He had accepted decorations and prizes from King Joseph Bonaparte, and lacking the support of important political figures, as was the case with Goya, he was subjected to “purification” as a public servant when Ferdinand VII returned, although he received a lifetime pension “by way of alms.” Maella died in 1819.

Along with Francisco Bayeu, Maella was unquestionably one of the most significant and influential artists employed by the court during the second half of the eighteenth century, and he held the highest posts there. His paintings combine Neoclassicism’s rationally ordered compositions with the movement and brilliant colours associated with the late Baroque and Rococo, deeply rooted in the work of Corrado Giaquinto. His technical ease reveals his Valencian origins, with free, loose and delicate brushstrokes that distinguish him from his contemporaries, especially in his altarpiece paintings and sketches. His large-format works, particularly his large decorative frescoes at the collegiate church of La Granja (1772), the chapel in El Pardo (1778), the cloisters of Toledo Cathedral (1775-1776), and the Casita del Príncipe at El Pardo (1789), follow the guidelines set out by Mengs, including numerous figures with classical grace and delicacy, exquisite detail (for example in their hands and in the subtle movement of their heads) and the enveloping beauty of the folds of their clothing.

Manuela Mena

Born in Madrid on 20 January 1716, the son of Philip V (1683-1746) and his second wife, Isabella Farnese (1692-1766). He enjoyed good health and was very keen on hunting. Besides Spanish, he spoke French and three Italian dialects, he wrote in Latin, and he learned some German. He showed great interest in manual trades such as clockmaking and printing, and enjoyed games like billiards. He was an outstanding student of geometry and mathematics, showed a great interest in flowers and trees, and possessed considerable knowledge of military tactics and fortifications.

When Antonio Farnese died without issue in 1731, Charles inherited the Duchy of Parma. Isabella Farnese had secured recognition for her son as heir to the rights of succession of the Farnese and the Medici. The War of the Polish Succession (1733-1735) prompted the kings of France and Spain to subscribe their first Pacte de Famille in 1733. At the head of the Spanish armies in Italy, the Infante Charles conquered Naples in 1734 for Philip V, who thereupon proclaimed him its king. With the conquest of the island of Sicily in 1735, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was born, over which he ruled as King Charles VII from 1734 to 1759, when he was proclaimed king of Spain. During these years, the two kingdoms preserved their autonomy and their respective laws, institutions and privileges. Charles’s reign has been seen as the starting point of the modern history of Southern Italy. Although Naples was chosen as the capital of the new kingdom, the king was always attentive to the problems of governing Sicily.

His reign was one of timid reforms. A fiscal reform was undertaken but ultimately failed, and the Bank of Naples was founded in 1751 in conjunction with an attempt to unify the monetary system. Agriculture, on the other hand, was at the level of mere subsistence, and livestock was transhumant. Charles was outstanding as an artistic patron, the chief exponent being the excavations at Pompeii and Herculaneum. His is the merit for the first systematic organisation of the work to recover the cities buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in the year 79 A.D.

He married Maria Amalia of Saxony in 1738. They had thirteen children, six boys and seven girls. Among them were Carlos Antonio, who would reign as king of Spain under the name of Charles IV; Fernando, who was to succeed his father in the Kingdom of Naples; and Gabriel Antonio, King Charles’s favourite son, who eventually married Maria Ana Victoria, the eldest daughter of the monarchs of Portugal.

He was proclaimed King of Spain on 11 September 1759 upon the death of Ferdinand VI, his brother, who left no heir. His son Fernando succeeded to the crown of the Two Sicilies under the regency of Bernardo Tanucci. Charles arrived in Spain at the port of Barcelona, and reached Madrid on 9 December 1759, although his solemn entrance was officially held in July 1760. In September of that year, Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony died. Charles III remained a widower for the rest of his life.

In his first government, he retained the same secretaries of the State Bureau as those of the previous reign with the exception of a newly appointed finance secretary, Leopoldo de Gregorio, Marquis of Esquilache, his tax minister in Naples. Together with Bernardo Wall, these figures now came to the political forefront. The initial policy of Charles and his ministers was geared towards three principal areas: the Treasury, the Army and the Navy. His financial policy started with recognition of the Crown’s debts during the reign of his father, Philip V, which Ferdinand VI had refused to assume. Reforms in the Army and Navy were necessary owing to the international situation during the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763). Charles III was in favour of armed neutrality, but was unable to maintain this position after England declared war on Spain in December 1761. With an Army and Navy still insufficiently prepared, the consequences were disastrous. The Treaty of Paris of 1763 confirmed England as the great hegemonic European power.

His reign in Spain began with a foreign defeat, and this may be why projects for reform of the Spanish Monarchy received firm encouragement. The reforms affected very diverse fields ranging from fiscal policy to the reorganisation of the administration of justice, the law on the entailment of real assets by the clergy, the elimination of constraints on guild production, the liberalisation of the grain trade in 1765, the control of the privileges of the Concejo de la Mesta (the wool traders’ council) in Extremadura, and the introduction of free trade with the American dominions between 1765 and 1778. There were also positive efforts to foster a popular industry, Nuevas Poblaciones (‘New Settlements’) were founded in Sierra Morena and Andalusia, notice started to be taken of social outcasts, the university curriculum was organised and reformed at Salamanca, Valladolid and Alcalá while the Colegios Mayores (‘Higher Colleges’) were suppressed, various ‘Economic Societies of Friends of the Country’ were founded, and Banco Nacional de San Carlos was created in 1782.

Both in Naples and in Madrid, where he earned the sobriquet of “the best mayor of Madrid”, Charles took an overt interest in the city’s affairs. Major urban improvements – street paving, guttering and sewage works, street lighting – were commissioned from Francesco Sabatini, and Charles managed to turn Madrid into the great capital of the Spanish Monarchy, embellishing it with buildings and monuments like the Museum of Natural History, the General Hospital, the College of Surgery, the Astronomical Observatory and the Botanical Garden. He supported the industrial arts, setting up the Capodimonte porcelain factory at El Buen Retiro in 1759, patronising the Royal Cloth Factory of Segovia in 1762, and protecting the interests of the Glass Factory of La Granja, founded by Philip V and remodelled in 1773. He also fostered science and technology, especially botany and medicine. For this purpose, he sent several scientific expeditions to America, one of which was the expedition of José Celestino Mutis to New Granada (1782-1808).

The reign of Charles III in Spain entered a second phase in 1766 after the so-called riots of Esquilache in Madrid, which were accompanied by numerous disturbances in other provinces. The pretext for the outbreak of the rioting on 10 March 1766 was an ordinance forbidding the traditional mufflers, long capes and round hats, which had to be replaced by a short cape or topcoat and a three-cornered hat in order to make it easier to identify wrongdoers. Besides demanding the reinstatement of the Spanish style of dress, the rioters also called for a reduction in the price of bread and the dismissal of foreign ministers, above all Esquilache.

One major consequence of the riots of the spring of 1766 was the expulsion of the Society of Jesus, which was very influential in the Church at that time. Given its absolute dependence on the pope, the Society defended doctrines contrary to the temporal power of kings. In a fiscal declaration of 1766, Campomanes requested the removal of the Jesuits from the kingdom, for which Floridablanca finally obtained the agreement of Pope Clement XIV in 1773. Although officially accused as instigators, the ministers of Charles III were aware that the main cause of the riots had been food shortages and hunger, and this explains later measures like the Agrarian Law of 1784, which restricted the privileges of the migratory flocks herded across Spain for the wool trade, and the proclamation of various mechanical trades as honourable.

During the decade from 1766 to 1776, marked by the riots and the downfall of Esquilache, the government of the Monarchy rested on the shoulders of certain individuals. Grimaldi was the first secretary of the State Bureau, Aranda and Campomanes were the president and fiscal advocate of the Council of Castile, and acting in coordination with them in all matters of regalist policy was Roda, the secretary of the Bureau of Grace and Justice. The rivalry between Grimaldi and Aranda led to a dispute between two court factions, the golillas (or lawyers) and the so-called ‘Aragonese party’. The failure of the expedition to Algiers in the summer of 1775 occasioned the fall of Grimaldi and his replacement by Floridablanca as secretary of the State Bureau. His departure marked the end of foreigners in the Monarchy’s government.

No sooner had he taken up his post than Floridablanca found himself confronted by such matters as the independence of the thirteen English colonies of North America. The renewal of the third Pacte de Famille (of 1761) with France through the Convention of Aranjuez of 1779 put Spain and England on the brink of war. Floridablanca was unable to retain the role of international arbiter that he desired, and at the urging of France, which had Charles III’s support, he was forced to subscribe the Convention. This led to the declaration of war, which nevertheless concluded with the advantageous Peace of Versailles, whereby Spain regained the island of Minorca and the two Floridas from Great Britain. One consequence of the war was the issuance of public debt, the so-called vales reales or royal debentures, from 1780 onwards.

In the last years of Charles III’s reign, Floridablanca consolidated his political primacy and became a kind of de facto prime minister. This situation resulted in 1787 in the creation by Royal Decree of the Supreme State Junta, which was accompanied by a reserved directive in whose drafting Charles III took a personal hand. The directive constitutes a domestic and foreign policy programme for the Monarchy in the second half of the eighteenth century. The Supreme State Junta set up by Floridablanca seems to have been the logical solution for a monarch who was by then close to death. He dictated his will to the Count of Floridablanca, acting as the interim secretary of Grace and Justice, on the morning of Saturday 13 December, 1788, and he died on 14 December. Charles III was the first Spanish Bourbon who wanted his remains to lie alongside those of the Habsburg kings as a sign of the dynastic continuity of the Hispanic Monarchy. Chronologically speaking, he was the last Spanish monarch of the Ancien Régime, since he died before the French Revolution of 1789.

The most intimate portrait of Charles III that has been preserved is the one written by the Count of Fernán-Núñez, who describes him as simple and straightforward in his personal dealings. Modestly dressed (and always in hunting outfit when in the country), he contrived to appear even-tempered, self-controlled, unceremonious and sometimes even easygoing. Very religious, he was a devotee of the Immaculate Conception and Saint Januarius. Austere, regular and chaste in his habits, Fernán-Núñez especially emphasises his affability towards all and sundry, including humble people and servants.

Among the overall judgements of his reign by some contemporaries, it is worth mentioning those of three critical spirits. In his Eulogy of Charles III of 1788, Jovellanos concluded that his had been “the wise and laborious hand that enlightened the nation and removed it from the influence of political errors.” In another Eulogy of Charles III of 1789, Cabarrús maintained that he had not had “any goal other than the happiness of his subjects.” And in his Funerary Eulogy of 1789, José Nicolás de Azara asserted that “on the throne, had he been a vassal, he was what he would have wished his monarch to be.”

Paloma Gómez Pastor