after Vincenzo Rè, plate IX from his ‘Narrazione delle Solonni Reali Feste fatte Celebrare in Napoli da sua Maesta il Re delle Due Sicilie Carlo Infante di Spagna, Duca di Parma, Piacenza &c., &c., per la Nascita del suo primogenito Filippo Real Principe delle Due Sicilie’, a visual record of Rè’s splendid architectural designs for staging festivities, fireworks and, in this plate, a section of the ornate royal theatre in Naples used to host a large public dance. This was all to celebrate the birth of Prince Philip as the first born of King Charles IV of the Two Sicilies, Prince of Spain, on 13th June, 1747, the year after he came to the throne. Sadly, Philip was soon found to be mentally disabled, so he was replaced in the succession by his younger brother, Ferdinand I, when Charles IV succeeded to the Spanish throne, as Charles III, in 1759. Philip, hidden away from public life in the palaces at Caserta and Capodimonte, died of small pox at the age of thirty, in 1777,
engraving on laid paper, 480 x 630 mm. (18 7/8 x 24 3/4 in), repaired split on central vertical fold, a few repaired marginal tears, all well outside the plate, [c.f. Berlin Kat. 3078 and Lipperheide S.148],