During a visit to my family that lives near Naples, Italy, I made an overnight excursion to the Royal Palace at Caserta. Built in the baroque style for the Bourbon King of Naples it is one of the largest royal residences in the world and has gorgeous decorative paintwork, gilding and trompe l'oeil. It has beautiful floors, highly decorated ceilings and some very fine furniture too but they can be featured in a separate post. For now, we will take a look at the wall decoration, especially the hand-painted details including stencilling and marbling.
Caserta is described as the Versailles of Italy. I stayed in the 'Ma Maison B&B, Caserta' in an airy, spacious room that was shouting distance from the palace doors. From my balcony, I could watch the visitors arriving for their tours. I spent ten hours in the palace and garden but could have much spent longer. Take note, both are closed on Tuesdays...a fact that I missed when I booked my accommodation.
My first hour at Caserta Palace was blissful, I strolled empty enfilades and enjoyed close up views of the decorative painting, fabrics and furnishings before the school parties and the tours arrived....and when they did there were hundreds of children emitting the same excited screeches that I was guilty of when lessons were replaced with an outing. Above the din a teacher would yell "Silencio!" and all fell to a quiet hum ...but only for a few seconds. It was good-natured and amusing but I decided to visit the garden then tour the house again at four when things may be quieter.
The room attendants were interested to know why I was taking pictures of peeling paint on shutters and simple decorative effects such as pinstriping on the walls and close-up details of silks and wallpaper.
They would then show me fancier decoration such as pietra dura tabletops, fine gilding work and a birdcage clock hanging from the ornate curtains...complete with Linnet!
At The Stencil Library, we make classical-style stencils of borders and motifs similar to many found at Caserta; a good place to start looking is in our range of Regency and Empire style stencils.
At the end of this post, I will give a couple of useful links to help plan a visit. Meanwhile, I will let you enjoy a little more of the painted decoration in the palace without the Italian schoolchildren photo-bombing you.
Yes, it's painted. Caserta is around a half hour train ride from Naples; my sister in law drove me there and collected me the next day. There is a large car park under the palace grounds. There is a restaurant on site and several more in the town. I booked in advance but you can buy tickets on the day.
Initially, I decided to visit the palace after seeing artist Steve Schriver's beautiful snapshots of his visit there and then I was prompted to finish this post after receiving my newsletter from Schumacher wallcoverings and fabrics, in which Dara Caponigro and Francesco Lagnese wrote their memories of The Palace of Caserta, the town and their photo shoot for Schumacher.
Last week I was at Salon Chamonix 2019, where I was part of a gathering of international decorative artisans. Some of my friends at Salon paint this type of decoration and restore the decorative paintwork in such palaces and places as Caserta. The painted marble below was shown at Salon
and is the work of Chantal Siebens at Doublefaux DoubleFaux, Antwerp, Belgium.
Pierre Finkelstein of Grand Illusions NYC USA is showing how it is done. Watching everyone paint is a delight. In a future post, I hope to show some work from previous Salon's, along with more of the interior and the gardens of Caserta....but for now, Ciao.
Helen.
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