The Porcelain Room at Aranjuez Palace: Charles III of Spain, Imperial Politics, and Natural History

FAIN: FT-285747-22

Tara M. Zanardi
CUNY Research Foundation, Hunter College (New York, NY 10065-5024)

Research and writing leading to a book on Charles III of Spain's Porcelain Room at Aranjuez (1760-65) as a material and visual display of his imperial ambitions.

The Porcelain Room is a tour de force interior that showcases a new method for employing porcelain. Its innovation typified the experimentation that occurred at Charles III’s Aranjuez Palace. Serving as the king’s office where he negotiated policy, the room embodied political messages that formed his imperial agenda and sense of kingship. I frame the room’s implementation of the rococo and chinoiserie as more than whimsical design. Rather, I assert that they are critical modes used to express Charles’ taste and imperial desires. Aranjuez embodied a microcosm of empire in its plantings, wildlife, and in the office’s ornately designed botanical, aviary, and bestiary motifs. By relating the botanical and zoological operations conducted at Aranjuez to the diversity and abundance of natural motifs in the Porcelain Room, both the room and the palace grounds show analogous ways to display the wealth of empire. I situate this interior in the context of eighteenth-century geopolitics.