Such was the prestige linked to the success of the factory that, when he was about to leave for Spain to inherit the throne (1759), the king ‘invited’ the craftsmen and technicians that worked there to follow him to take the factory to Madrid. The facilities and kilns in Naples were destroyed but one of the first achievements of his son Ferdinand, as soon as he was freed from paternal tutelage, was to open a new factory. Sophisticated examples of the articles produced by the factories of Caroline and Ferdinand are on display in the porcelain gallery on the first floor of the museum. Restoration work on the fittings and decoration was carried out during the eighteenth century. During the ‘French decade’ (1806-1815, the reigns of Joseph Bonaparte and Joaquin Murat, the result of the Napoleonic conquests) and subsequently with the Bourbon restoration, the palace became the special setting for courtly life as well as for historic and civic events. Joachim Murat and Caroline Bonaparte preferred the palace on the hill. Following the orders of Murat (King of Naples from 1808 to 1815), ordered links between the hill and the urban centre to be transformed into a more functional system through the construction of a long road known as ‘corso Napoleone’ (the continuation of via Santa Teresa degli Scalzi, now known as ‘corso Amedeo di Savoia Duca d’Aosta’ in its last stretch). The project (1807-1809, designed by Nicola Leandro with Gioacchino Avellino and the work supervised by Bartolomeo Grasso) featured a wide, straight road spanning the valley of 10 THE MUSEUM OF CAPODIMONTE
the Sanità with an innovative bridge. The perspective of the street ends with the elliptical piazza called ‘Tondo di Capodimonte’. Italian unification marked an important step in the transformation of the palace of Capodimonte into a museum: Annibale Sacco, the administrative head of the House of Savoy, planned to use several rooms of the ‘piano nobile’ (main floor) as a ‘gallery’ for works by contemporary painters and sculptors, with subsequent enlargements following purchases by the Savoys, marking the arrival of ‘contemporary’ art alongside the ‘ancient’ collections. Capodimonte consolidated its role as a palace-museum: until the Second World War, it was the residence of the dukes of Aosta. During this period, there was an expansion of the collections of paintings, art objects and furnishings which were moved to Capodimonte from the old Bourbon palaces: in 1866, a sensation was caused by the arrival of Capodimonte porcelain panels from the royal palace of Portici which, during the mid-eighteenth century, had decorated the walls of the boudoir of Queen Maria Amalia of Saxony (wife of Charles). The panels were dismantled and reassembled – down to the smallest detail, including the chandelier – in the northern wing of the palace of Capodimonte [room 51, close to the entrance hall of the historic apartment]. They are one of the most sophisticated examples of the widespread European fashion for ‘chinoiserie’ which was popular among the royal houses during the eighteenth century. In May 1957, the Museum and National