Portrait of King Carlo VII of Naples, subsequently King Carlos III of Spain (1716-1788), half-length in a red coat with gold trimmings over a breastplate, wearing the Order of the Golden Fleece, his crown beside him

The son of King Philip V of Spain by his wife Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, Charles inherited the duchies of Parma, Piacenza and Tuscany through his mother in 1731. He subsequently won Naples from the Habsburgs in 1734 during the War of the Polish Succession and in 1738, when his conquest was recognized by the treaty of Vienna, he was invested by the Pope with the kingdoms of Sicily and Jerusalem. On the death in 1759 of his half-brother, Ferdinand VI, he acceded to the Spanish throne as Charles III, in turn relinquishing that of Naples to his own third son, Ferdinand. The present picture represents him as a young man not long after his conquest of Naples.

The Villa Rosebery was built in 1801 by an Austrian admiral in the fleet of Bourbon Naples, Josef von Thurn, who had acquired the land shortly before. It was confiscated by the Bonaparte government of Murat in 1806 but returned to the admiral after the Restoration of 1815. Von Thurn later sold the property and in 1857 it came into the hands of Luigi di Borbone, the brother of the king of Naples. At the unification of Italy and the exile of the Bourbons, the property went through a succession of sales until in 1897 was bought by Archibald Philip Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847-1929), and British Prime Minister during the Liberal government of 1895. The villa was subsequently donated to the British government, and in 1932 was given to the Italian state, becoming a summer residence of the royal family. After a period of disuse after the Second World War, the villa became the property of the Italian presidency in 1957.