The King’s Woods
The Provision and Exhibition of Exotic Species in Spanish Palaces (1746-1833):
by Pedro Luengo Gutierrez, Jose Luis Sancho and Carlos Sanz de Miguel
Paperback (Published)
(November 2025)
ISBN: 9788891335777
8.43 x 10.98 inches
Price: $175.00
In stock
The present volume sets out to demonstrate that the prominence of wood in the construction of various royal residences from the mid-18th century to the early decades of the 19th was designed to sustain a rhetoric of Bourbon power in which the Americas and the Philippines played a central role. Meeting the challenge of selecting and supplying the right species required an exceptionally efficient viceregal structure. It depended on a documentary system that kept local authorities informed of the shifting demands for material, as well as on a sizeable body of professionals charged with managing these requirements in America and Asia. From the balconies and doors of the principal floors of the Palacio Real (Royal Palace) to the floors and panelling of offices in other residences, overseas timbers were made to occupy the most politically significant spaces. This Spanish initiative must be viewed in relation to developments in the English sphere, particularly the spread of mahogany, which from there extended to the rest of Europe. Once the potential of these materials to generate an imperial reading had been confirmed the initial preference for Cuban mahogany and Colombian timbers broadened into a much wider repertoire, prominently including Asian species. Thus, in the closing decades of the 18th century and the opening years of the 19th, the political decline of the Bourbons contrasted sharply with the exuberance of their Hispanic courtly production. The refinement of these interiors, integrating furniture with panelling and flooring, was far from superficial: it articulated a narrative in which the overseas territories – already moving towards independence – remained pivotal.
- By (author) Pedro Luengo Gutierrez
- By (author) Jose Luis Sancho
- By (author) Carlos Sanz de Miguel
Other Titles in this Series
Gli astri benigni di Agostino Chigi
Peruzzi, Sebastiano e Raffaello nella Loggia della Galatea
Volume 33
Architettura e antichita Napoli dal XV al XVIII secolo
Le Colonne del tempio dei Dioscuri e la chiesa di San Paolo Maggiore
Volume 6
Edouard Jaguer
'Phases' e l'Italia: Aspetti delle relazioni tra surrealismo e informale nell'Europa del secondo dopoguerra
Volume 35
Dalle Fiandre a Napoli
Committenza artistica, politica, diplomazia al tempo di Alfonzo il Magnanimo e Filippo il Buono
Volume 9
Luigi Poletti. Gli orientamenti del restauro nella prima meta dell’Ottocento
Stile, filologia, storia
Volume 26
A Second Mona Lisa?
Challenges of attribution and authentication and various possibilities for evaluating a work of art
Volume 27
L’accademia del nudo e i manuali del Guercino
Saggio di storie dell'arte, teoria dell'immagine e simbolica politica
Volume 37
Le chiese di Corneto nel XII e XIII secolo
Tra autonomia innesti e scambi di culture architettoniche
Volume 29
Giovanni Baratta 1670-1747. Scultura e industria del marmo tra la Toscana e le corti d’Europa
Volume 10
La Santissima Trinita in Monte Oliveto
Storia, architettura e arte di un monastero vallombrosano nella Verona medievale
Volume 40
Similar Books
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Beyond Sovereign Courts
Agents and Practices in Early Modern Spanish and Habsburg Diplomacy
Volume 3
Circulation, Use, Impact
The Consumption of Architectural Books in the Early Modern Eastern Adriatic
Volume 1
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
Legal Visuality
Exegesis, Ambiguity, and Dissimulation of the Donation of Constantine in the Early Modern Period
Naples as Laboratory / Laboratorium Neapel
Style Options, Artistic Rivalry and Self Fashioning in Neapolitan Baroque Painting / Plurale Stilbildung, Kunstlerkonkurrenz und Self Fashioning in der neapolitanischen Barockmalerei
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Portraying the Individual in the Roman East
Local–Imperial Entanglements in Sculpture, Mosaics, and Paintings (First–Fourth Centuries AD)
Volume 18
Technical Studies of Asian Art
Proceedings of the Seventh Forbes Symposium at the Freer Gallery of Art
Die Entwicklung erdbebensicherer Bautechniken in der Frühen und Mittleren Eisenzeit in Ostanatolien
Volume 11
La chiesa di San Francesco grande e l’ospedale antico di Padova
Archeologia Storia Arte Architettura e Restauri
Volume 8
Art and Mysticism in Silesia in the Baroque Period
Angelus Silesius, Bernhard Rosa, and Michael Willmann
Beiträge zur Islamischen Kunst und Archäologie
The Arts and Archaeology of Funerary Cultures in Islam
Volume 10.0
