This plate comes from the 'Royal Mask', a deluxe album published in Barcelona in 1764 and a pivotal work in the history of eighteenth-century Catalan engraving. It illustrates the celebrations held by the guilds and professional associations five years before, when the Bourbon Charles III arrived in the city from Naples on his way to Madrid to be crowned King of Spain. Myths and allegories take on special importance in the way the orderly night-time parades are represented in many of the engravings. Despite the links these engravings show to Renaissance and Baroque iconography of ephemeral celebrations, they evoke another sumptuous figurative world, one that is refined and imbued with a rococo spirit.
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