Helena Almeida: 'Seduzir' [To Seduce, 2002] (detail)

Collection

María Luisa de Parma, princesa de Asturias [Maria Louisa of Parma, Princess of Asturias]

Image caption
MARIANO SALVADOR MAELLA  (Workshop of)

María Luisa de Parma, princesa de Asturias [Maria Louisa of Parma, Princess of Asturias]

  • 1783
  • Oil on canvas
  • 159 x 115 cm
  • Cat. P_145
  • Commissioned from the artist by the Banco Nacional de San Carlos in 1782
By:

In the society of the Ancien Régime, effigies of royalty, ranging from simple prints to oil portraits by the most illustrious painters, must have substituted for the physical presence of certain members of the royal family in countless public and institutional ceremonials throughout Spain. In early 1783, a building rented from the Count of Sástago in Calle de la Luna started to be refurbished as the head offices of the nascent Banco Nacional de San Carlos. For the place of honour under the canopy of the large General Assembly Hall, the institution asked Mariano Salvador Maella (1739-1819) to paint a portrait of Charles III and a corresponding pair of images of the Prince and Princess of Asturias. The first shareholders’ meeting was held on 20 December 1782 in what was still a provisional venue, “[…] the inn of His Excellency Don Manuel Ventura Figueroa, Governor of the elect Patriarchal Council of the Indies”, where there was probably no portrait of the monarch. Nevertheless, Maella wrote the following to the Count of Floridablanca on 21 January 1783: “Your Excellency, the Directors of the National Bank of San Carlos have spoken to me regarding painting the portraits for them of the King, of our lord the Prince and the Princess, and of other Royal Personages, to be hung in the Assembly Hall of the Bank. I have replied to them that it was impossible for me to satisfy their request as I have barely enough time for the pieces I am working on now by order of His Majesty, and the best I can do to assist you for the time being is to have one of my pupils copy the portraits under my supervision, though in any case it does not seem fitting to me to make a copy myself, or allow copies to be made, of some portraits painted by His Majesty’s order without knowing if they will be to his Royal liking. I humbly beg Your Excellency to be so good as to advise me what action I should take in this matter, as I shall not proceed in any way without your instructions.” It did not take long for Charles III to give his opinion on this point of iconographic protocol, for an answer was sent to the Secretary of State on 27 January: “Your Excellency, it appears there is no objection to having these copies made by the pupil that Maella mentions. Be it so done.”

It was quite true that Mariano Maella was immersed at the start of 1783 in work on several commissions authorised by the king himself, one of them a monumental canvas representing the Assumption of the Virgin for the high altar of the collegiate church of Talavera de la Reina. This task was framed within a context of frenetic artistic patronage the length and breadth of the diocese of the powerful Bishop of Toledo, Francisco Antonio Lorenzana. Where portraits are concerned, Maella moreover wrote in one of his memorials that concurrently with the request from Banco de San Carlos, “[…] in the year ’83, by order of His Majesty, he painted the portraits of the King and of the Prince and Princess to send to the Lord Infante Don Luis, and another of His Majesty for Constantinople.” Indeed, these three portraits appear inventoried as works of Maella during the execution of the will of the Infante Luis in 1797, after which they passed by inheritance to the Countess of Chinchón and consequently to the collection of Manuel Godoy, the ‘Prince of Peace’. After the confiscation of Godoy’s goods, they were also catalogued by Frédéric Quilliet, though now listed as anonymous, and in the case of the portrait of Charles III in armour, simply as a “copy of Mengs”. These pictures were deposited along with the rest of Godoy’s collection at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, and a long time later, in February 1891, they were selected, still regarded as anonymous, for dispatch to the School of Fine Arts and Crafts of Bilbao. Later still, in 1913, they were transferred on long-term loan to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Bilbao. Owing to ignorance of the vital fact that they originally belonged to the Infante Luis, these canvases, iconographically identical with those at Banco de España, have remained to date under attribution to Maella’s pupil Ginés Andrés de Aguirre rather than to Maella himself, even though the loan to Bilbao was extinguished in May 2013 by the Real Academia de San Fernando.

The original prototype of this pair of portraits of Charles and Maria Luisa of Parma, and the basis for the portraits at Banco de España, was probably conceived by Mariano Salvador Maella just a few months before he was contacted by the bank. The iconography was commissioned within the context of a large series of some ten portraits of the royal family which were to be sent to Lisbon in October that year as an intimate gift from Charles III to Queen Maria I of Portugal. It is therefore quite likely that the Valencian artist decided to paint a couple of sets of portraits of the Prince and Princess of Asturias almost simultaneously, one to be sent to the Portuguese court and the other to be kept in his own workshop in case new versions were needed in the future. This practice of making ricordi of portraits must have been fairly widespread. Where the 1782 prototype of the Prince and Princess of Asturias was concerned, requests for new copies arrived very soon. One pair, the object of the present study, was ordered in January 1783 by Banco de San Carlos, and another was commissioned rather later to be sent to the Infante Luis in his banishment at the palace of La Mosquera in Arenas de San Pedro.

It has been pointed out elsewhere that the original iconography of the Prince and Princess of Asturias that is replicated by these canvases painted for Banco de San Carlos was intended as a replacement for the previous official image of 1766, painted by Maella’s mentor, Anton Raphael Mengs. In the etiquette of the Spanish court, Mengs’s omnipresent image of Charles and Maria Luisa of Parma had held sway for nearly two decades. Charles III was doubtless of the opinion that it was time to project a new dynastic message to his subjects for a royal couple who were very soon to ascend the throne of Spain. One detail that reveals the enormous importance of this commission for Maella is the permission granted to the painter to sketch the faces from life for the first version, “[…] having the honour of taking them from the Royal personages themselves.” Indeed, this may explain why the board of Banco de San Carlos approached the Valencian artist rather than other Court Painters like Francisco Bayeu when protocol required portraits for the place of honour beneath the ceremonial canopy of the large General Assembly Hall. Maella’s new prototype shows not only the implacable passage of time in the faces but also a programmatic updating of the courtly setting. In 1766, Mengs immortalised a young recently married couple in a garden, but now, in 1782, the Valencian painter is required to compose portraits of a more public and official nature. The original image of Prince Charles, where his main activity seems to be hunting, makes way here for that of an heir with the ability to assume the Spanish Crown and the tremendous responsibility it entailed. In 1766, in the meantime, Maria Luisa of Parma had not yet been a mother, whereas in 1782, at the age of 31, the Princess had already had the Infante Carlos Clemente, who had sadly died in 1774, and in 1781 had at last given birth to another male heir, the Infante Carlos Eusebio. At a date very close to the painting of this portrait by Maella, the Princess furthermore gave birth to the Infanta María Luisa Josefina, although another daughter, the Infanta María Luisa Carlota, died aged four almost at the same time. Indeed, it does not seem coincidental that Maella should show the Princess of Asturias in a blue and white costume, a subtle allusion to the mantle of the Immaculate Conception.

As soon as Maella received news in early 1783 of the possibility of this commission from Banco de San Carlos, the artist requested due authorisation from Charles III to reproduce the originals of 1782. The precautions taken by the Valencian artist before replicating an iconography that was in principle designed only for commissions emanating directly from the monarch himself, not from the court, nevertheless contrast with the freedom enjoyed by his competitor Francisco de Goya just a few years later, at the start of 1789, when he concluded the next official iconography of Charles and Maria Luisa of Parma, now King and Queen. Previously unpublished documents discovered in the Banco de España archive show that Maella was personally to be paid 3,600 reales for this set of portraits, even though the client had been informed that the actual painting would be done only by an assistant, albeit under the master’s supervision and, presumably, with some touches of his own in certain specific areas of the painting. Rather like a factory, Maella charged for these canvases copied by one of his pupils as if they were his own. In the same way, Francisco de Goya invoiced large numbers of portraits of Charles IV and Maria Luisa throughout 1789 which must of necessity have been executed by his pupil Agustín Esteve.

At the same time, the documentation located in the Banco de España archive indicates that his portraits of the Prince and Princess of Asturias remained under the canopy of the General Assembly Hall, even throughout the reign of Charles IV. As we mentioned earlier, the set of paintings was completed in Maella’s workshop with a replica of Mengs’s portrait of Charles III in armour, like the one that was sent later on to the Infante Luis. Around 1786, however, the bank judged this image of the monarch to be antiquated, and a full-length portrait was commissioned instead from Francisco de Goya. It still remains to be determined exactly why there was a fleeting attempt in the last years of Charles III’s reign to modify his iconography, the context in which we must understand Goya’s commissions to paint the series of pictures of Charles III as a hunter and the aforementioned Banco de España portrait in court dress.

José Manuel de la Mano

The portraits of Charles IV and Marie Louise of Parma which accompany Charles III in Armour (also in the Banco de España Collection) were commissioned from Mariano Salvador Maella in 1782 and produced at his studio, probably by Andrés Ginés de Aguirre, who had already handled a commission for the monarchy in the form of a portrait of Charles III in 1760. The paintings repeat formulas from known models, and were both initially attributed to Anton Raphael Mengs, under whose name they appeared in the inventory drawn up by the Banco de San Carlos in 1847 on the occasion of its merger with the Banco de Isabel II. In the 1980s they were believed to be by Luis Paret, but a forgotten report dated 1868 attributed them to Maella, perhaps based on the commission document, which the report cites repeatedly.

Several very similar copies of this pair of portraits exist. The best known are those at the Fine Arts Museum of Bilbao, where they were also attributed to Paret; those formerly held in the Navas collection in Madrid, which Beruete and Mayer attributed to Francisco de Goya, and another pair owned by the National Heritage Association and held at the monastery of La Encarnación in Madrid, attributed to Antonio Carnicero.

The evidence cited in regard to the portrait of Maria Louisa refers to the attitude, the position of her hands and the use of the flowers from the painting of her produced by Mengs in around 1765 (Maria Louisa of Parma, Princess of Asturias, now at the Prado); but it can also be compared in terms of technique and character with those painted by Maella in around 1785 of the Princess Joaquina as a child. The princess was the daughter of Charles IV and Maria Louisa (the painting is known as Carlota Joaquina, Princess of Spain, Queen of Portugal, and is held at the Prado). The hair, the way in which her hands are drawn, the general tone of the composition and her clothing are all comparable with the portraits of the princess painted by Peret, with colder colours. This must be what led to the theory that this work was by the latter and not by Maella.

The portrait of the young Charles IV is unlike any known prototype by Mengs, but it is similar (albeit with more intimate nuances) to the paintings that he produced years later in a more official, more solemn context (those at the Pedralbes palace in Barcelona and the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico). It can be assumed that these works were produced at his studio, but documentary records indicate that the actual hand that painted them belonged to a talented collaborator.

Javier Portús writes that the inventories of the Banco de España and its predecessors reveal quite precisely where certain works were located up to the mid 19th century. According to the 'Inventory of valuables and furnishings at the Banco Nacional de San Carlos located at the offices indicated', cited by Portús, the pair of paintings of Charles IV and Marie Louise of Parma before Charles became king accompanied Goya's portrait of Charles III, in line with the representative role assigned to such paintings, in the Board Room of the original Banco de San Carlos headquarters building on Calle de la Luna in Madrid.

Comments updated by Carlos Martín.

Alfonso Pérez Sánchez

 
By:
Manuela Mena
Mariano Salvador Maella
Valencia 1739 - Madrid 1819

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

 
By:
Paloma Gómez Pastor
María Luisa de Parma (Parma 1751 - Roma 1819)
Reina consorte de España 1788 - 1808

In her day, Queen Maria Luisa was much vilified in diplomatic correspondence and in the libels that were circulated with political ends in France and, in part, also in Spain. The Marquis of Villaurrutia, one of her worst biographers, claims that accounts of Maria Luisa’s intimate life spread “through gossip shops, taverns and salons” and passed “into posterity in official despatches from ambassadors, travellers’ tales, Spanish letters and memoirs, and French libels.” Some of the biographers based their works on diplomatic correspondence like that of the French after the Revolution, and particularly under the Consulate and the Empire, always ready to disparage kings and their families.

She was the third child of the Infante Felipe, Duke of Parma, the brother of Charles III, and Princess Louise Élisabeth, the eldest daughter of Louis XV. She was born in Parma on 9 December 1751. In 1765, at the age of thirteen, she married the seventeen-year-old Carlos Antonio de Borbón, the future Charles IV of Spain. Her education in the court of Parma, one of the most enlightened in Europe, may have influenced her taste for the fine arts, but it was in the Spanish court of Charles III that she was conscientiously prepared for her role as princess and future queen. Her love of painting and music must have been consolidated alongside her husband, Charles IV, who as Prince of Asturias was already a distinguished patron of the arts.

She had fourteen children, of whom only seven reached adulthood, and ten miscarriages. Her first child was born in 1771 and died in 1774. The future King Ferdinand VII was born in 1784, and Carlos María Isidro in 1788. Maria Luisa’s last child, the Infante Francisco de Paula Antonio, was born in 1794, when the queen was 47 years old. Owing to births and miscarriages together with a lack of exercise and an unsuitable diet, as was then common, Maria Luisa aged very quickly. Decalcification left her without teeth, and her facial appearance suffered for it.

After the downfall of Godoy, “the legend” of Queen Maria Luisa became extremely complicated, acquiring greater dimensions and surprising incongruences. It is generally recognised that Charles IV was frank and open by nature, a man of his word and a completely faithful husband who never took part in the slightest intrigue or thought ill of anyone, though he is said to have been irresolute. The king’s carefree life and various accounts of his complete lack of interest in affairs of state provided the foundation for legends claiming that power lay entirely in the hands of the queen and the ‘Prince of Peace’.

The Crown encouraged and stimulated the activities of the Junta (Committee) of Ladies of Honour and Merit of the Royal Economic Society of Friends of the Country, which Maria Luisa joined while still Princess of Asturias, as did the Infantas. She showed interest in the teaching at the patriotic schools and in children’s education, as seen in the care she took to provide suitable instruction for her own children. In 1791, she founded the Order of noble women that bore her name, for which she commissioned a project and had a part in the drafting of the Statutes. The ladies belonging to this Order were under the obligation to visit women’s hospitals or asylums, among other social and charity work.

The queen provided patronage for artists, especially Goya, and helped to stimulate cultural development. The royal favour dispensed to Goya is evident in the letters of Zapater and in the number of paintings the king and queen commissioned from him, as well as the praise voiced by Maria Luisa for some of the portraits he painted of her, especially the equestrian portrait of 1789. The queen intervened in the decoration of the rooms of the palace in Madrid and the other royal residences, and is attributed with introducing what was called in Spain the ‘Charles IV style’, known internationally as the Louis XVI style. She also appears to have been the inspiration behind the Casitas (‘cottages’, or small palaces on the royal estates). Since Aranjuez was her favourite residence, she put special interest into the building and decoration of the Casita del Labrador (‘Farmer’s Cottage’).

With the marriage of the Prince of Asturias, the future Ferdinand VII, to Princess Maria Antonia of the Two Sicilies, palace intrigues started to flourish in the princely apartments, where they were stoked by Canon Escóiquiz. The main objective of these intrigues was to discredit the king and queen and so secure the abdication of Charles IV in favour of his son. The conspiracy of El Escorial should be seen as a precursor of the Aranjuez Mutiny of March 1808, which resulted in the fall of Godoy and Charles IV’s abdication in favour of his heir apparent.

Queen Maria Luisa accompanied King Charles IV to Bayonne, where she was subjected with him to Napoleon’s coercions. They were both banished to France for several years, and took up residence in Rome in 1812.

In Rome, they formed an important collection of paintings to decorate the palaces where they resided. The paintings they gathered at the Palazzo Barberini and Villa Aventino were inventoried by the court painters José de Madrazo and Juan Antonio Rivera. The finest were attributed to Titian, Correggio, Leonardo, Lucas Cranach, Andrea del Sarto, Parmigianino, Bronzino, Palma Vecchio, Tintoretto, Veronese, Poussin, Gaspar Dughet and Alessandro Turchi. They were brought to Madrid and sorted into lots for division among the heirs.

In Italy, Maria Luisa was subjected to pressure and surveillance on account of the so-called “Crown jewels”, which Ferdinand VII had demanded from his parents upon his return to Spain in 1814, supposing that they must have taken them with them to Bayonne. According to Charles IV, they had been handed over to Ferdinand VII in Aranjuez after the abdication of March 1808, and the only jewels taken to Bayonne had been personal property.

Manuel de Godoy followed Charles IV and Maria Luisa into exile, and never abandoned them. To reward him for his proven fidelity, they made a will in his favour, appointing him their universal heir. Godoy remained faithful and loyal to the king and queen until his death, and refused to publish his Memoirs, which vindicated Charles IV and his reign, as long as Ferdinand VII was still alive. For this reason, they did not appear until 1836.

Paloma Gómez Pastor

 
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