Allegory of the Entry of Charles Bourbon into Naples

Painted in 1735, when Solimena was eighty-three, this allegorical canvas commemorates the entry of Charles of Bourbon into Naples in 1734, when the city shifted from Habsburg to Bourbon rule after centuries of Spanish and then Austrian governance. Charles became Charles VII of Naples and Sicily, founding the Bourbon dynasty in southern Italy that would endure until Italian unification. Solimena, by this date the dean of Neapolitan painting, produced this celebratory allegory as a dynastic statement welcoming the new order — a politically astute act from an artist who had previously portrayed the Habsburg emperor Charles VI. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's holding confirms the canvas's international circulation, likely through later Bourbon dispersals or the nineteenth-century art market. At this late date, significant workshop participation is expected, but the conception and overall design would have remained under Solimena's direction.

Late allegorical canvases celebrating dynastic events typically combined portraiture-derived facial features for identifiable figures with conventional allegorical personifications. Solimena's 1735 work would deploy his established compositional grammar — ascending diagonal of figures, strong lighting from one side — while the scale and format were likely determined by the ceremonial function of the piece.