Spanish school; mid-eighteenth century."Portrait of Carlos VII King of Naples, future Charles III of Spain".Oil on canvas.Presents faults in the painting.Size: 105 x 84 cm.In this canvas, the king is captured in three quarters, elegantly dressed highlighting the blue band in allusion to the dynasty of the Bourbons. The painter has managed to endow the colors with almost tactile qualities, by extracting the right brightness through skilful glazes and velvety traces of the garments. The composition follows baroque patterns by placing the figure between the open curtain to show an idealized landscape background and a table on which the crown rests. The tonal counterpoints between the red cloth and the violet sky are fully achieved, and we can appreciate the debt to the official portraits that were made during the Baroque period, but also to the sensuality of the Venetian school. It is also worth noting the psychological penetration of the character, endowed with solemn status. In profile, although with his face turned, the protagonist of this work looks directly at the viewer in a round, authoritative and sober way, but not with disdain. His attitude, which is defined by his pose, his gesture, and his elegant clothes, makes us understand the social level of the king, who enjoys the recognition and admiration of his class. The work has a great aesthetic similarity with the piece that belongs to the collection of the Prado Museum in Madrid, made by Giovanni Maria delle Piane, in 1737. In both pieces the monarch appears adopting a similar attitude, also following the same composition in the conception of the portrait. However, slight differences can be appreciated, such as the crown, which in the case of Piane's painting has no presence, being replaced by a helmet. In addition, in the work presented here, the facial features indicate that we are dealing with an older, more experienced and rotund monarch.In the 18th century, the panorama of European portraiture was varied and broad, with numerous influences and largely determined by the taste of both the clientele and the painter himself. However, in this century a new concept of portraiture was born, which would evolve throughout the century and unify all the national schools: the desire to capture the personality of the human being and his character, beyond his external reality and his social rank, in his effigy. During the previous century, portraiture had become consolidated among the upper classes, and was no longer reserved only for the court. For this reason the formulas of the genre, as the seventeenth century progressed and even more so in the eighteenth century, would relax and move away from the ostentatious and symbolic official representations typical of the Baroque apparatus.