ABSTRACT
Basing discussion around The King hunting on Lake Patria, painted for Charles of Bourbon by Claude-Joseph Vernet, argues that images of the king hunting, operated as particularly effective vehicles of royal interest in the struggle waged by the founder monarch of the Bourbon dynasty in Naples to wrest territorial control from the feudal barons. It begins by suggesting the ways in which Vernet's painting, organized according to many of the formal terms of classical view painting, was able to imbue the new Neapolitan territorial type of the royal hunting reserve with some of the venerated associations of classical landscape. It then investigates the complex political status of the actual territory represented in order to suggest that the royal hunting park was uniquely adapted to serve as instrument. Finally, the chapter identifies the particular strategies through which Vernet's view was able to amplify and extend the political relations already configured in the landscape of the hunting park.
