The Royal Palace of Capodimonte
The Royal Palace of Capodimonte
Another of Charles of Bourbon’s masterpieces: the grand palace that dominates all of Naples, housing one of Italy’s richest museums and once home to one of the world’s most celebrated manufactories.
On September 10, 1738, construction work on the Palace began: Charles had conquered Naples and Sicily in 1734, and immediately ordered the construction of the new Palace—the first tangible demonstration of his determination to make the Kingdom fully sovereign and independent from Spain.
From the outset, Charles chose as the site for the future palace the vast Capodimonte woods (124 hectares of land), from which one can admire the panorama of the gulf and the city, between Vesuvius, the hill of San Martino, and Posillipo.
Moreover, from the beginning, it was the King’s intention that the palace—like Palazzo Pitti in Florence—should serve the dual function of royal residence and celebrated museum.
The architects were the Palermitan Giovanni Antonio Medrano and the Roman Antonio Canevari, who later became involved in a not particularly dignified mutual rivalry. In the 1750s and 1760s, Ferdinando Fuga served as general superintendent of the works. Medrano developed three project variants: variant C was ultimately chosen (still preserved at Capodimonte), which envisioned a vast building with a rectangular plan (170 m in length and 87 m on the shorter side), with a mezzanine and two floors above the attics for vertical development (30 m). The style adopted is neoclassical, characteristic of the great European Courts; the layout solemn and majestic, celebrating the dynasty.
For the elevations, the Palace presents, externally and internally, rigorous facades in severe Doric style (considered most suitable for a building also intended to house a museum) and measured sixteenth-century taste, articulated by strong gray piperno stone elements, skillfully contrasted with the Neapolitan red of the plastered walls.
In the first months, construction proceeded rapidly, overcoming even the many obstacles created by transporting materials to the summit of Capodimonte, then accessible only via a steep uphill route, through the use of tuff stones obtained from excavations conducted for the building’s deep foundations; vast and deep cisterns were also created to address the chronic water shortage.
However, there was then a certain slowdown in the works, both due to specifically economic problems and because Charles began to conceive and make concrete the grand project of the Royal Palace of Caserta.
Work resumed vigorously in the 1760s under Ferdinand IV and Tanucci (notably, these were the years when work on the Royal Palace of Caserta slowed); but only during Ferdinand II’s reign was the palace completed, under the direction of architect Tommaso Giordano and the supervision of Antonio Niccolini, with the elevation of the northern courtyard.
A fundamental role was played by the great hunting park, which was not only a passion common to the Bourbons of Naples, but a true “function of State; around the Sovereign, engaged in hunting activity, moves a varied Court composed of ministers, nobles, foreign guests, often Heads of State, as well as artists and painters called to portray the scene as an official ceremony”
[Capodimonte. Da Reggia a Museo, by the Superintendency for Artistic and Historical Heritage of Naples and Province, Elio de Rosa editore, Naples 1995, p. 9. We draw information from this work. See also: Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, edited by N. Spinosa, Superintendency for Artistic and Historical Heritage of Naples and Province, Electa Naples, 1994; N. SPINOSA, Capodimonte, Superintendency for Artistic and Historical Heritage of Naples and Province, Electa Naples, 1999].
The Woods, traditionally attributed to Ferdinando Sanfelice, unlike the other royal parks, were conceived entirely independently of the Palace’s location, and the layout itself was designed in relation to hunting activity. It features over 4,000 catalogued varieties of centuries-old trees, including holm oaks, oaks, lindens, chestnuts, cypresses, and pines.
It was created according to a scenographic layout of clear Baroque design, with five very long tree-lined avenues radiating from the entrance square, rich with numerous marble statues, and the intersection, with evocative perspective effects, of minor avenues traced within dense natural vegetation, “thus combining, with the traditional taste for the orderly and symmetrical perspective structure of the ‘Italian garden’ readapted on French examples, the more recent interest, already of Romantic inclination, for the apparently spontaneous aspect of the ‘English garden'” [In Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, cited, p. 8].
Scattered throughout the greenery are a series of buildings intended for Court life (Queen’s Lodge, Princes’ Palace), as seats of royal manufactories (including the building of the Porcelain Manufactory), for religious functions (Church of San Gennaro, Capuchin Hermitage), and for agricultural and livestock activities (Pheasantry, Cellar, Dairy).
Also noteworthy is the Statuary Park, created to ornament fountains, avenues, and lodges.
Over time, the Palace hosted illustrious figures of European culture, including, among others, Winckelmann, Fragonard, Angelika Kauffmann, Canova, Goethe, and Hackert, who restored damaged paintings and curated the picture gallery.
The Museum
As early as 1735, King Charles had given orders for the transfer to Naples of the Farnese collections inherited from his mother Elizabeth Farnese. The substantial collections, consisting of paintings, drawings, bronzes, art and furnishing objects, medals and coins, gems, cameos, and various archaeological material, were then predominantly housed in the Palazzo della Pilotta in Parma, then to a lesser extent in the Palazzo del Giardino also in Parma, in the Ducal Palace of Piacenza, in the residence of Colorno, and in Palazzo Farnese in Rome.
King Charles, who was still Duke of Parma and Piacenza, ordered a comprehensive general inventory of the artistic material:
against the backdrop of the city of Naples
pieces of little value were discarded (only a minimal part, naturally), while the great body of works, brought to Naples, was first arranged in the Royal Palace, then moved to Capodimonte as soon as the Palace was ready to house the museum.
As early as 1739, a commission of experts was charged by the Sovereign with studying the most suitable arrangement for part of the collections arrived from Parma: it was decided to reserve for paintings the rooms facing south and toward the sea, as they were drier and better lit, while for books, medals, and other objects the so-called “back rooms” were chosen, which faced toward the woods.
Only in 1758, however, were the first 12 of the 24 rooms intended for the library, medal collection, picture gallery, and antiquities collection completed on the piano nobile.
Before the plunder carried out by the Napoleonic forces in 1799, the paintings numbered as many as 1,783 (note that the original Farnese picture gallery counted “only” 329 paintings, and not all were brought to Naples by Charles); it is clear that, in addition to the Farnese collection, works from the Bourbon collection were already on display.
The French took away more than 300 [Ibid., p. 9].
During the nineteenth century, the Museum was enriched with other important sections: the Bourbon collections, paintings and precious objects from suppressed monasteries, from royal and private donations, and from subsequent acquisitions;
Also, the masterpieces of Cardinal Borgia, purchased by Ferdinand I in 1817, Egyptian, Etruscan, Volscian, Greek, and Roman antiquities, including the famous Celestial Globe.
Finally, the graphic collection, one of the most prestigious in Italy, and the new nucleus of works by contemporary artists. An exemplary demonstration, based on rigor, culture, and wholly unusual passion in daily management, of how a formidable historical heritage can re-emerge on the international artistic circuit.
Other “removals” then occurred in 1860, at the time of the Kingdom’s occupation by Garibaldi: of the 900 and more paintings on display, fewer than 800 remained [Ibid., p. 10].
The Royal Palace of Capodimonte became a National Museum after Unification.
