La Famille de Philippe V

By 1743 Philip the Fifth was the first Bourbon to sit on the Spanish throne, and this enormous canvas, more than 5 metres wide, was built to prove that the dynasty had taken root. The French painter Louis-Michel van Loo gathered 13 members of the family into one invented palace room. The king sits beside his forceful second wife, Elisabeth Farnese, whose hand rests near the crown. Around them stand the sons who would rule next, Ferdinand and the future Charles the Third, with their wives, while musicians play on a balcony above. Everyone is life-sized, dressed in jewels and silk, arranged less like a family than like a claim to the future.