La Antigüedad al servicio del rey. La difusión del gusto pompeyano en España en el siglo XVIII

The diffusion of Pompeian taste in Spain during the reign of Charles III did not reach the notoriety expected. It was later on with Charles IV and Maria Luisa, interested by the new esthetic currents, when they introduced the Pompeian styles in their countryside residences. The arrival of the plaster casts from the Herculanese Museum in 1765, of the volumes of Le Antichita di Ercolano and finally the so-called Servizio Ercolanese, served as a reference to Spanish artists who at that time continued to resort to classical and renaissance sources such as the frescoes of the Domus Aurea and Raphael’s Vatican Loggias. This article analyzes pieces from the Herculaneum porcelain service, acquired by the National Museum of Decorative Arts and traces their relationship to the originals found in Pompeii and Herculaneum preserved in the museum of Portici before 1780.