GOYA Y LUCIENTES, Francisco de

Until the end of his life Goya, in spite of old age and infirmity, continued to record the world around him in paintings and drawings and in the new technique of lithography.

Many of Goya’s etchings and drawings testify to his concern for the plight of lunatics and prisoners throughout his life.

This painting (La Romeria de San Isidro) was originally in the ground floor room of the Quinta del Sordo.

The Pilgrimage to San Isidro filled one long wall of the Quinta, opposite a painting called The Great He-Goat or Witches’ Sabbath in the downstairs room of the house. Goya may have been prompted to paint this subject by the fact that the Quinta was built in the neighbourhood of the Hermitage of San Isidro and by the recollection of having painted the Hermitage and the Meadow of San Isidro in happier, earlier days. Without knowledge of the title, however, it would be hard to identify the procession of figures moving forward, their features becoming clearer and more awful as they get near, as a procession of pilgrims. Goya’s viewpoint in this painting must have been close to that in the Meadow scene, but there is no view of the city in the background.

The picture shows the left side of the huge painting.

The picture shows the right side of the huge painting.

This prison scene is related in style and character to a number of small paintings of war scenes and other subjects inspired by the Napoleonic invasion. Prisoners - not only prisoners of war - are among the victims of injustice and cruelty that figure in many of Goya’s drawings and engravings. A garroted man is the subject of one of his earliest etchings and various other forms of punishment and torture are represented in later graphic works. Three etchings of about 1815 show chained and shackled prisoners very similar to those in the painting. This prison scene, executed with a minimum of colour, is remarkable for the atmosphere of gloom and the effect of anonymous suffering created by the lightly painted, indistinct figures in an enormous cavern-like setting.

Comparison with The Yard of a Madhouse lead critics to date this painting as early as 1793-94.

The participation of flagellants in Holy Week processions in Spain was banned in 1777 but evidently not effectively since the ban was published again in 1779 and 1802. Goya’s known hatred of fanaticism, explicit in many later drawings and engravings, suggests that his choice of subject was intended as an indictment of this form of public penance. So does his manner of recording the scene. The holy image of the Virgin is silhouetted against the dark wall of the church and the blood-stained figures of the flagellants stand out from and dominate the procession.

An Inquisition scene in the same series is similar in character. Both paintings combine realistic reportage with critical intent in a manner, often seeming to approach caricature, which is peculiar to Goya. Many years later he returned to the subject in a drawing entitled Holy Week in Spain in Times Past.

Although many of his contemporaries were opposed to bullfighting (Charles III imposed restrictions on the sport; it was banned in 1808 but the ban was lifted by Joseph Bonaparte in 1810), there is every reason to believe that Goya was an aficionado. There is even some truth in the stories of his performance in the ring. Goya made portraits of several bullfighters and many paintings, drawings and engravings of the national sport. A scene of the baiting of young bulls {La Novillada}, in which he portrayed himself, was the subject of one of his early tapestry cartoons, and a rounding up of bulls (El encierro de los toros) was one of his decorations for the Osuna country residence. In 1816 he published the Tauromaquia, a series of 33 etchings, for which he had made many drawings. Among his last works executed in France is a set of four lithographs, the Bulls of Bordeaux.

A Village Bullfight is one of his most impressive paintings of the subject. The sketchy style and dark tones create a vivid impression of the actions of the protagonists and of the dense crowd of spectators grouped round the scene. It was perhaps in a setting such as this that Goya himself sometimes entered the ring as an amateur bullfighter.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Georges Bizet: Carmen, Prelude

The popular dress worn by ‘majos’ and ‘majas’ was thought to have originated amongst the gypsies of southern Spain. Adopted by the people of Madrid at first for May Day festivities, in the 18th century it became a sort of national costume and a form of protest, too, against French influence.

At the end of 1809, during the French occupation of Madrid, Goya was chosen as ‘el pintor madrileno por excelencia’ to paint a portrait of Joseph Bonaparte for the City Council. In the absence of the French King, Goya composed this picture, described at the time as ‘certainly worthy of the purpose for which it was intended’, introducing the portrait of Joseph (after an engraving) in the medallion, to which the figure personifying Madrid points. With the changing fortunes of the war this portrait was replaced (by other hands) by the word ‘Constituci�n’, by another portrait of Joseph, again by ‘Constituci�n’ and at the end of the war by a portrait of Ferdinand VII. Eventually in 1843 it received the present inscription ‘DOS DE MAYO’ (‘The second of May’) in reference to the popular rising against the French in Madrid in 1808. The surprisingly conventional allegorical composition is perhaps dictated by the purpose for which it was originally painted. It contrasts strikingly with the realism and fervour of the scenes from the rising which Goya painted four years later.

Goya caricatures the pride of the hidalgos. Some 500.000 of Spain’s population of around 10 million considered themselves to belong to this lesser branch of the nobility. Since work was beneath their station, most of them were impoverished, their only possessions being a long line of ancestors.

This painting (Al aquelarre) was originally in the first floor room of the Quinta del Sordo.

Asmodi was a demon who lifted off the roofs of houses and revealed to his companion the licentious ways of their inhabitants. Probably an allusion to the artist’s ‘illicit relationship’ with Leocadia Weiss.

This painting (El destino) was originally in the first floor room of the Quinta del Sordo.

Bartolom� Sureda was the director of the Spanish royal textile, crystal, and ceramic factories.He taught Goya the technique of aquatint. In 1804 Sureda became director of the porcelain works at the Buen Retiro.

The companion-piece of the portrait, also in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, represents his wife.

This is Plate 5 (Tal para qual) from the series Los Caprichos.

Godoy, the Chief Minister, was the target of Goya’s satirical wit in several plates of Los Caprichos, for instance. in the etching entitled Birds of a Feather. According to contemporary commentaries this is a reference to Godoy and Queen Mar�a Luisa, in particular to an occasion when she was mocked by a group of washerwomen for her unseemly behaviour.

In 1788 Goya was engaged on the sketches for cartoons for tapestries to decorate the bedroom of the Infantes in the Palace of El Pardo. Blind Man’s Buff is the only finished cartoon made from these sketches (the sketch for it is in the Prado), probably because of the death of Charles III and the subsequent withdrawal of tapestries from El Pardo.

Goya has reverted to a conventional composition with marionette-like figures for the representation of a society pastime. Gathered on the banks of the Manzanares river are a number of ladies and gentlemen, some dressed in the latest Parisian fashions, others in the flamboyant costumes worn by Spanish ‘majos’ and ‘majas’.

This is Plate 64 from the series The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

War is ravaging the country, the fields are left unfilled and in the city the people are starving, the poor first.

Prisoners - not only prisoners of war - are among the victims of injustice and cruelty that figure in many of Goya’s drawings and engravings.

There are two other variants by the artist’s hands.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 9 minutes):

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto in B flat major RV 362 op. 8 No. 10 (Hunt)

Goya clearly had in mind for this royal group the composition of Vel�zquez’s Meninas, which he had copied in an engraving many years before. Like Vel�zquez, he has placed himself at an easel in the background, to one side of the canvas. But his is a more formal royal portrait than Vel�zquez’s: the figures are grouped almost crowded together in front of the wall and there is no attempt to create an illusion of space. The eyes of Goya are directed towards the spectator as if he were looking at the whole scene in a mirror. The somewhat awkward arrangement of the figures suggests, however, that he composed the group in his studio from sketches made from life. Goya is known to have made four journeys to Aranjuez in 1800 to paint ten portraits of the royal family. Since there are 12 figures in the group it is likely that the woman seen in profile and the woman whose head is turned away — the only two whose identity is uncertain were not present at the time.

Goya’s magnificent royal assembly is dominated not by Charles IV but by the central figure of the Queen, Mar�a Luisa, whose ugly features are accentuated by her ornate costume and rich jewels. For some unknown reason this was the last occasion that Goya is known to have painted any member of this royal family, except for the future Ferdinand VII, who stands in the foreground on the left. The unusual figure composition on the wall behind the group has been identified as Lot and his Daughters, but no such painting has been identified.

Goya presented the ‘Pious Schools’ with another small panel depicting Christ, alone and wracked with doubt, shortly before his arrest. It is a pendant to the large altarpiece (The Last Communion of St Joseph of Calasanz) in which the artist celebrates trust and security.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 14 minutes):

Ludwig van Beethoven: Christ on the Mount of Olives, op. 85, Introduction and Jesus’ aria

The companion piece of the painting, in the same collection, represents the Countess Fern�n N�nez.

This graphics belongs to Album C.

Goya was a master of the rapid sketch - his albums are like notebooks in which he captures scenes from everyday life, preferably with women in them.

This is one of the tapestry designs commissioned for the royal palaces.

Like Vel�zquez, Goya was also in demand as a painter of children. After he was appointed Painter to the King of Spain, Charles III, the conde de Altamira commissioned him to paint portraits of his family, including his youngest son, Don Manuel, born in 1784. The fashionably dressed child holds a pet magpie on a string. In the background three cats stare menacingly at the bird, traditionally a symbol of the soul, which gives the painting a sinister and unsettling character. Goya apparently intended this portrait as an illustration of the frail boundaries that separate a child’s world from the ever-present forces of evil.

Goya’s signature is on the ring of the sitter. Both the authenticity and the dating of the painting is debated.

This is the companion-piece of the portrait of Bartolom� Sureda y Miserol, also in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, representing the sitter’s husband.

Goya’s fame is as ambiguous as his career. A fashionable court painter and society portraitist, once renowned for his designs of light-hearted decorations, he is now celebrated as a passionate denouncer of injustice and the horrors of war. Supreme recorder of his countrymen’s diversions, superstitions and travails, he is also the greatest master of private nightmare, expressed above all in the horrific ‘Black Paintings’ made for his own house. Perhaps the last great artist working in a style associated with ‘anciens r�gimes’ throughout Europe, he has been called ‘the first of the moderns’.

A painter rivalling Vel�zquez in the freedom of his brush and his understanding of light and shade, Goya came to be known outside Spain for his engravings, etchings and aquatints, some of the finest ever produced. In a career spanning over sixty years he left some five hundred paintings, most of them still in Spain (where he also executed frescoes), and many more prints and drawings.

Doña Isabel and her husband Don Antonio were close friends of Goya; according to tradition he painted both their portraits during a visit to their home in gratitude for their hospitality. Don Antonio’s likeness, formerly in the Jockey Club, Buenos Aires, was subsequently destroyed in a fire.

Doña Isabel wears the dress of a maja - a style originally associated with the demimonde of Madrid, but in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries adopted by ladies of fashion as a token of Spanish patriotism, and also, no doubt, because its black lace mantilla and high waist were madly flattering, as we can see here. The dress justifies the pose, which we know from Flamenco dance: left arm akimbo, torso and head sharply turned in different directions. Perfectly adapted to the half-length format, the protruding right arm and hand providing a stable base for the torso, this pose without the maja connotation would have been unacceptably vulgar in the portrait of a lady. We experience it as wonderfully emancipated.

Goya emphasizes Doña Isabel best features, her eyes and her fresh colouring, without hiding the fleshy nose and slightly underslung jaw; the incipient double chin adds to her youthful charm. Freely painted, the mantilla serves as a dark aureole to her bright face, and tones down the shimmering pink and white bodice in order not to distract from the flesh tones.

This painting (Rina a garrotzos;Dos forasteros) was originally in the first floor room of the Quinta del Sordo.

Two men are battling each other with cudgels. Both are standing up to their knees in sand, so that neither can run away, and it remains unclear whether even the victor will be able to extricate himself. There are no spectators in sight. Bloody madness in a bleak landscape.

This is Plate 1 from the series Los Disparates or Proverbios.

Some of the subjects of the tapestry cartoons described as ‘the pleasures of the nursery’ enjoyed by grown-ups were to be transformed in Goya’s late lithographs into dark, grotesque parodies.

Wearing a tricolour sash, the French Ambassador to Spain poses in Madrid. He represents a new order; in 1793 he voted for the death of King Louis XVI, a cousin of the Spanish monarch.

Goya has portrayed himself in this tapestry cartoon. He is said to have spent much time amongst bullfighters in his youth.

The uncommissioned subjects which Goya painted during his convalescence included not only lunatics in a courtyard, but also fires, shipwrecks and highway robberies. His world was no longer as cheerful and bright as the one he had been required to portray in his tapestry cartoons.

She is about 20 years old and is profiting from the emancipation of women cautiously proceeding in Goya’s day. Her face is no longer concealed by a veil, and she looks self-confidently out at the viewer.

Goya painted this grand portrait of his friend and patron Jovellanos (1744-1811), the learned writer and liberal statesman, at the time of his appointment as Minister of Grace and Justice. The liberal patriot and nobleman fought - with increasing success - for reforms and against ignorance, superstition and the Inquisition. The portrait was painted while the court was at Aranjuez.

Not long afterwards Goya painted a portrait of Francisco de Saavedra, Minister of Finance, after he succeeded Godoy as Secretary of State (March 1798), in similar pose. Heroes of a brief liberal interlude, both ministers were soon to be relieved of their posts, victims of Godoy: Jovellanos to become a political prisoner in Mallorca for seven years. Jovellanos, who was 54 years old when he came to power and was painted by Goya, is known to have taken much trouble with his hair, here seen carefully dressed, as he refused to wear a wig. Goya has placed his sitter in a rich setting, with muted lighting, seated in melancholy pose, beside an ornate table covered with papers and with an inkwell. A statue of Minerva in bronze is a tribute to the sitter’s great learning and distinguished position at the time of the painting. Jovellanos bequeathed Goya’s portrait to his friend and protector, Arias de Saavedra.

Jovellanos as well as Goya used the language of satire to attack social and political abuse. The second of Goya’s Caprichos in which a blind-folded young woman is led to the altar by an ugly old man, takes its caption from a verse by his patron: ‘They say yes and offer their hand to the first comer.’ The Minister’s concern for prison reform also found a response in the artist in his many illustrations of the torture of prisoners.

This graphics belongs to the Sanl�car Album.

Goya stayed with the Duchess of Alba at her Andalusian estate in Sanl�car after her husband’s death and made several drawings of scenes in the domestic life of the Duchess and her household.

This is Plate 61 from the series Los Caprichos.

The Duchess of Alba appears also in Goya’s Caprichos: standing proudly on the back of three witch-like figures, she flies through the air. The heads of the figures resemble those of famous bullfighters. The white, doll-like face of the Duchess appears haughtily reserved, and in her hair she wears butterfly wings as a symbol of unpredictable flightiness.

In addition to this profile drawing, Goya painted other portraits of Gumersinda, a minature in near profile, a full length portrait and a sitting portrait.

This is Plate 36 from the series The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

Contemplating the man who has just lost his life - is a uniformed soldier, leaning back in a relaxed fashion. Like him, Goya too questions the sense of killing.

Goya returned to this subject after many years later he painted the Procession of Flagellants (Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid).

The model is the son of Pedro de Borb�n and Princess Braganza.

This is a plate from the series The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

Depending on how they date this painting, art historians see in it a portrait either of Goya’s wife Josefa or his subsequent partner Leocadia Weiss, who moved in with the artist in 1813, just one year after Josefa’s death, and lived with him until his death.

The model, archivist of the Inquisition, wears the Spanish Royal Order, given by Joseph Bonaparte in 1809. He left Madrid in 1812 together with the French.

With the French finally expelled, in 1814 Ferdinand VII returned from exile. The 30-year-old monarch proceeded to hound Spain’s liberals, with whom Goya was closely affiliated. Anxious to keep his post and salary as Court Painter, Goya executed six portraits of the King, none of them commissioned.

The companion piece of this painting, the Water Carrier is also in the Budapest Museum.

The painting represents Maria del Rosario Fern�ndez, the famous actress. The title of the painting was originated from the fact that her husband, also an actor, frequently played the role of tyrants.

Like many other uncommissioned works, the subject of this painting has been interpreted in various ways and it has borne several descriptive titles. The woman reading the letter has been thought to be a portrait. One critic even suggested that she was the Duchess of Alba (who had died many years before the painting was made), and that she is represented with washerwomen in the background to illustrate a theme of ‘Industry and Idleness’. It has also been suggested that Goya intended this painting as a pendant to Time and the Old Women. The two canvases are almost exactly the same size, were acquired for the Palais des Beaux-Arts, Lille, at the same time and have the same provenance. But there seems to be no obvious connection between the subjects of the two paintings and Time and the Old Women, which is known to have been in Goya’s possession in 1812, is almost certainly a slightly earlier work. There is, in fact, little reason to doubt that the woman reading a letter, standing with her companion and a dog in front of a group of washerwomen, is a genre subject like the earlier tapestry cartoons and other decorative paintings. But the composition is less contrived and, as in many other works, chiefly the uncommissioned ones, it appears to be based on a scene that the artist had witnessed and recorded on the spot or from memory. This was one of four paintings by Goya in the collection of King Louis Philippe which had been obtained in Madrid from Goya’s son.

The mark ‘X23’ at the bottom of the canvas identifies this as a painting listed in 1812 in the inventory of paintings in Goya’s house allocated to his son Javier. It probably hung next to one or other of two versions of Majas on a Balcony that bears the number X24. The painting of Les Jeunes or the Young Ones (A Woman Reading a Letter), long thought to have been a pendant and later sharing the same history, was possibly intended as such, although painted a year or two later.

Exceptional in its way as a life-size Capricho, the scale makes the satirical purport the more forceful. But though the general meaning is clear - the ridiculing of the pretentiousness and vanity of the rich and old and ugly - the exact message ‘Que tal?’ (‘How goes it?’) on the back of the mirror is not spelt out. A similar theme, without the figure of Time, which is the subject of Plate 55 of Los Caprichos, has lent itself to interpretation as a reference to the Dowager Duchess of Osuna, and also to Queen Mar�a Luisa, renowned for her vanity and her ugliness. In support of such an allusion, though the Queen had long since left Spain when this painting was made, one of these old women wears a diamond arrow similar to that worn by Mar�a Luisa in the group portrait of Charles IV and his Family.

Goya’s son was no doubt referring to this and other paintings that Goya owned in 1812 when he wrote in one of his biographies of his father that Goya was specially interested in the paintings in his house ‘because they were made with all the liberty that ownership affords; a liberty which led him in some cases to use the palette knife instead of the brush…and he particularly enjoyed seeing them every day’.

The beautiful young woman, the maja, shows off her charms on the balcony, while behind her — in sharp contrast — is Celestina, the hideous, old, money-grubbing matchmaker.

Supervised by the threatening figures of two heavily-cloaked ‘majos’, two ‘majas’ look down upon the passers-by. One even gives a hint of a smile, highly unusual for Goya’s women. Since 1995 the authenticity of this canvas has been in doubt.

This painting (Una manola) was originally in the ground floor room of the Quinta del Sordo.

The woman dressed in mourning may represent Leocadia Weiss, who became Goya’s partner after the death of his wife, Josefa. She is leaning against a mound of earth with a grave rail on top. The artist offers no explanation for the scene. It is possible that Goya himself is supposed to be lying in the grave, and that his Black Paintings are meant to be seen as messages from the hereafter.

This portrait was painted between July and October 1801 to commemorate the victory in Portugal, the War of the Oranges, so-called because Godoy, Chief Minister, is said to have sent a gift of oranges to the Queen in celebration. The Portuguese banners prominent in the foreground were awarded to Godoy in July and in October he was made Generalissimo of land and sea, which entitled him to wear a blue sash in place of the red sash of Captain General, which he wears here.

Goya has portrayed Godoy in an elaborate and unusual composition, in a reclining posture reminiscent of some of his paintings of women on couches, seemingly inappropriate for the hero of a military victory. Goya’s portrait hints at disrespect for the pomposity of his sitter, though Godoy was an important patron, a collector on a grand scale, for whom Goya painted many works including the famous portrait of his wife, the Countess of Chinchon. Godoy was also owner of the two Majas and may even have commissioned them.

Goya’s friendship with liberal ministers, such as Jovellanos and Saavedra, did not affect the relationship between the First Court Painter and the Chief Minister, whose rapid rise to power, attributed to his liaison with the Queen, made him notorious. Godoy must have been aware of the fact that he had been and still was the target of Goya’s satirical wit in several plates of Los Caprichos, the ass looking up his genealogy in a book illustrated with row after row of asses, for instance, and in the etching entitled Birds of a Feather (Tal para qual). According to contemporary commentaries this is a reference to Godoy and Queen Mar�a Luisa, in particular to an occasion when she was mocked by a group of washerwomen for her unseemly behaviour. Yet despite all this, Godoy in his Memoirs written years later in France referred to Goya’s Caprichos with pride as if he had been responsible for their publication.

Mariana Waldstein (1763-1808), Marquesa de Santa Cruz, a native Austrian, was one of the most prominent women in late eighteenth-century Spain. By her marriage she was the Duchess d’Alba’s aunt and an intimate of Lucien Bonaparte.

Maria Ana de Pontejos married one of the brothers of the Count of Floridablanca, a royal minister, in 1786.

This is Plate 77 from the series The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

The Pope balances above the heads of the crowd. The hope that the rope might break was not fulfilled.

This is Plate 1 from the series The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

This is Plate 69 from the series The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra).

This etching plays on the hope that, after death, we shall finally learn the truth. Goya shows a corpse raising itself back out of the tomb. It points to a piece of paper, on which is written “Nada” - “Nothing”.

This is Plate 40 (De que mal morir�?) from the series Los Caprichos.

This graphics belongs to Album H.

In his last sketchbook, Goya pokes fun at old men who act as if they were still young. He occasionally takes a look at himself, too, from an ironic distance.

This is Plate 12 from the series Los Caprichos.

The young woman, recoiling in fear at the sight of the hanged man, is nevertheless reaching greedily into his mouth for his teeth, which are precious ingredients for magic potions.

This graphics is from Album F.

As well as scenes of war and torture, Goya’s sketchbook includes a wealth of studies of scenes from the daily lives of ordinary people. We see dancing, drinking, a man helping a woman over a stream.

The portrait represents Jos� (Pepito) Costa y Bonells (died l870). His father, Rafael Costa de Quintana, was doctor to Ferdinand VII.

This graphics belongs to Album H.

The phantom is an old man swaying and dancing in his nightshirt.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 4 minutes):

Gioacchino Rossini: La Danza

Goya was fascinated by bullfighting all his life and portrayed himself with a young bull in one of his early tapestry cartoons (Museo del Prado, Madrid). In 1793 he submitted to the Royal Academy eight small paintings of scenes from the life of a bull chosen for the ring.

This is one of the tapestry designs commissioned for the royal palaces. The tapestry was not executed.

Goya went from Saragossa to Madrid, where, helped by his brother-in-law Francisco Bayeu, from 1775 to 1792 he worked on cartoons for the tapestry factory. He depicted bright, colourful, popular themes, evoking the Madrid of the time, such as the Playing at Giants.

According to a modern label on the back of the picture, the sitter was a doctor of law, and financial representative of the Spanish government in Paris at the end of the eighteenth century. He is known to have been a collector and to have owned a number of paintings by Goya.

Goya’s friend Carderera commented the painting that Goya ‘had such care and love for the grand effect of a picture that he usually put the last touches on by night with artificial light, at times taking little account of whether the drawing was more or less accurate’.

In Goya’s work the combinations of colour became an expression of the artist’s mood.

The sitter was a leading actress, mother of the playwright Gil y Z�rate and one of several members of the theatrical world portrayed by Goya. She was born in 1775 and was 30 years old at the time when this portrait was probably painted. She died in 1811. Another bust portrait has been dated earlier by some critics and later by others. But the pose and details of her face and coiffure are so similar only the dress and fancy headdress are different that the two portraits cannot be very different in date.

The liveliness of the close-up view of the bust portrait suggests that this may be Goya’s first likeness of his beautiful sitter, later transformed into a grand composition. The problem of dating two versions of the same subject is not uncommon in Goya’s oeuvre. The yellow settee appears in other portraits by Goya (for example the portrait of P�rez Estala in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg) and was probably a studio property. Nowhere, however, does it provide a more effective setting than here, as a background to the lovely dark-haired actress.

Asensio Julia was a painter and follower of Goya, who worked with him on the frescoes for San Antonio de la Florida. The artist stands in front of the scaffolding in the church, with some paintbrushes on the ground on the right.

After the restoration of Ferdinand VII in 1814, Goya was commissioned to paint several portraits of him for ministries and public buildings. For these he seems to have used the same study of the King’s head, possibly the drawing in the Biblioteca Nacional, Madrid. The pose, the setting and the costume are varied to suit the occasion. The effect — perhaps intentional - is that of a living head on the body of a dummy. In this ceremonial portrait, the King appears in the uniform of a Captain General with a military camp in the background - a conventional formula, since he had taken part in no military campaign, having spent the war years in France. The broad painting of the costume and decorations and the sketchy treatment of the background direct attention to the head of the King which stands out as a grimly realistic character study.

Goya’s portrait of his brother-in-law and former teacher, whom he succeeded as Director of the Academy, was probably painted after Bayeu’s death in August 1795. It was unfinished when it was exhibited in the Academy of San Fernando later in the same month. Although this portrait is based on a self-portrait by Bayeu it has all the appearance of a study from life. The predominance of grey and silvery tones is characteristic of a group of Goya’s portraits dating from the last years of the eighteenth century. An earlier portrait of Bayeu (1786) by Goya is in the Museo San P�o V, Valencia.

Goya’s son Francisco Javier was the only surviving child of several when he married in 1805.

Marqu�s de Caballero (1760-1821) was the Minister of Justice when Goya painted this portrait. Goya signed the painting on the paper held by the left hand of the sitter.

The sitter was an architect who was appointed Director of the Royal Academy of San Fernando in August 1815. He wears the uniform of his office and holds dividers, an attribute of his profession. The plan on the table beside him is possibly for the church of Santiago in Madrid on which he had worked in 1811 and which made his reputation. The portrait was probably finished before Goya fell ill at the end of 1819 and is one of his last official portraits. The inscription indicates that it is at the same time a portrait of a friend.

The painting is signed: ‘Dn. Juan Anto/Cuervo/Directr de la RI/Academia de Sn/Fernando/Por su amigo Goya/ano 1819’

Goya was especially fond of his only grandson, Mariano, who was born on 11 July 1806. He painted his portrait on several occasions. There is an earlier full-length portrait of him by Goya aged about four and a head and shoulders of him as a young man in 1827. In the present portrait he appears to be six to eight years old. Seated beside an enormous musical score he is beating time with a roll of paper. This natural gesture, the informal pose and the thoughtful look on the child’s face combine to make this one of the most intimate of Goya’s portraits and reflects the great affection that he is known to have had for his grandson. It was to Mariano that Goya gave the Quinta del Sordo, the house containing the Black Paintings.

The painting is signed on the back of the panel: ‘Goya, a su nieto’ (Goya, to his grandson).

In his early schooling Goya made his lifelong friendship with Martin Zapater, with whom he would exchange correspondence for much of his life. Goya painted two portraits of Zapater, a wealthy corn-merchant, this portrait in Bilbao and seven years earlier another, now in a private collection.

In the summer of 1783 the Infante Don Luis de Borb�n, brother of Charles III, invited Goya to stay at his residence of Arena de San Pedro, where the painter executed a series of portraits (possibly sixteen) of Don Luis’s family. Goya mentions the equestrian portrait of Mar�a Teresa de Vallabriga, the wife of Don Luis, in a letter to his friend Martin Zapater on 2 July 1784.

Although the artist referred to a painting that was unfinished, the reference has been linked to this canvas of the Uffizi.

Evident in this work is Goya’s revival and re-adaptation of the 17-century tradition of the equestrian portrait, particularly that of Vel�zquez.

The sitter in this painting has been identified as a nephew of Jos� Duaso y Latre, the clergyman in whose house Goya took shelter in 1823 at the end of the liberal interlude. It has been suggested that the date in the inscription has been altered and that the portrait was painted not later than 1820, the last year in which Satu� held office as Alcalde de Corte (a City Councillor of Madrid). From the costume, the informal pose and the style of painting it could have been painted either in 1820 or 1823.

The sitter, only six or seven years old, wears the uniform of page to Joseph Bonaparte. He was the nephew of General Nicolas Guye, who was also portrayed by Goya in 1810 (Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond). According to an inscription on the back of the canvas, the two portraits were painted as pendants. During the French occupation of Madrid - at the time when he was working on the drawings for the Desastres de la Guerra - Goya painted several portraits of Frenchmen and pro-French Spaniards. Little or nothing of his avowed hostility to the French invaders is revealed in these works, least of all in this sympathetic portrayal of a French child.

It has been suggested that this handsome, plump young woman is Goya’s daughter-in-law, Gumersinda Goicoechea, and that the portrait was painted shortly before or shortly after the birth of his grandson Mariano. Though it is difficult to judge the resemblance to Goya’s other portraits of Gumersinda - a profile drawing, a miniature in near profile and a full-length portrait of a much slimmer and more elegant figure, with a different coiffure - there is a similarity in the features that makes the identification credible. The portrait was in the collection of Goya’s son but when it left his collection the name of the sitter was forgotten.

The stunning dress, of a still Tiepolesque lightness, stands out against a timeless, unidentified background; but what really strikes us in this portrait is the totally unidealized face, and the closed, melancholy, uncomprehending expression which verges on idiocy. This is Mar�a Teresa de Vallabriga y Borbon, Countess of Chinch�n, the daughter of Don Luis de Borbon and Mar�a Teresa de Vallabriga, and wife of Manuel Godoy, the favourite of Queen Mar�a Luisa.

The thirteenth Duchess of Alba was born in 1762, widowed in 1796 and died in 1802 in mysterious circumstances, which gave rise to the rumour that she was poisoned. She was a prominent figure in Madrid society. Goya’s relations with the Duchess were such that they have led to the suggestion that she posed for La Maja Desnuda. He stayed with her at her Andalusian estate in Sanl�car after her husband’s death and made several drawings of scenes in the domestic life of the Duchess and her household. She is also recognizable in several plates of Los Caprichos and in one unpublished etching, which seems to record an estrangement from the artist. The present portrait was almost certainly painted during Goya’s stay at Sanl�car and remained in his possession.

The name Alba on the ring on the Duchess’s third finger and Goya on that on the downward-pointing index finger are in themselves evidence of Goya’s intimacy with his sitter. The inscription on the ground at the Duchess’s feet, to which her finger points (only uncovered in modern times), reads Solo Goya, the word solo (‘only’) strengthening the assumption that they were lovers. The stiff figure with its expressionless face is, however, more like the puppet-like figures of the tapestry cartoons than a portrait of a familiar sitter.

Wellington is the only Englishman, and one of very few foreigners, to have had their portraits painted by Goya. As victor of the Battle of Salamanca, the Earl of Wellington and Lieutenant-General, as he then was, had liberated Madrid from the French, entering the city in August 1812, when he sat for Goya. He is shown with the decorations of three Orders, the Bath (topmost star), the Tower and Sword of Portugal (lower left), and San Fernando of Spain (lower right). The insignia of the Golden Fleece was probably added to the costume later in the month, and the uniform altered to an approximation of Wellington’s dress uniform as general. Originally he had been painted wearing the oval Peninsular Medallion; Goya retouched the portrait two years later, when Wellington returned as ambassador to the restored King Ferdinand VII and the medallion had been replaced by the Military Gold Cross.

Arthur Wellesley, first Duke of Wellington, 43 when the portrait was made and greying at the temples, looks out from above his medals with an alert and good-humoured air. Goya often gave his sitters an animated expression by showing them with their mouths slightly open; even the Queen of Spain, Mar�a Luisa, shows her teeth in a famous group portrait of 1800 - an unthinkable breach of etiquette in any earlier age. Here, the duke’s short upper lip is drawn up over two large English front teeth, a ‘speaking likeness’. He is unlikely to have been speaking to Goya, who was totally deaf as a result of an illness in 1792 and could communicate only in sign language and by writing.

‘He painted only in one session, sometimes of ten hours, but never in the [late] afternoon. The last touches for the better effect of a picture he gave at night, by artificial light’, wrote Goya’s son, Francisco Javier, in his biography of the artist. The liveliness of this portrait suggests it is painted from life (although it is doubtful that ‘Senor Willington’, as Goya called him, sat for the full ten hours). The glitter of the decorations, so much bolder than the highlights on the flesh or the catchlights in the eyes, equally suggests that they may have been touched up at night. We know that both uniform and decorations were altered by Goya after the first sitting.

There are two known portraits in oils of Wellington by Goya, one large equestrian portrait (Apsley House, London) and this bust as well as two drawings. A third painting of Wellington with hat and cloak (National Gallery of Art, Washington) is no longer considered to be by Goya. All are related, but the order of their execution and their precise interrelations are difficult to determine. It has been suggested that the drawings may have been made in preparation for an etching that was never executed. The British Museum drawing, in which the head most closely resembles the head in the paintings, may, however, have served as a study for these. An inscription on this drawing says that it was a study for the equestrian portrait and an accompanying note (said to be in the hand either of Goya’s grandson or of his friend Carderera), that it was made at Alba de Tormes after the Battle of Ar�piles (i.e. Salamanca). The battle was fought on 22 July 1812 and Wellington was at Alba de Tormes on the following day, but it is unlikely that he was able to sit to Goya before he entered Madrid on 12 August. The equestrian portrait, the only one for which documents exist, must have been painted between 12 August and 2 September, when it was to be exhibited in the Academy of San Fernando.

The National Gallery painting was probably painted before he left Madrid on 1 September 1812, at the same time as the equestrian composition, when Wellington was still Earl of Wellington and Lieutenant-General. Of the two paintings, the head in the National Gallery version is the most animated and the most likely to have been taken from life. It is also the only one that represents Wellington in full military costume and the most ceremonial in appearance. Some of the decorations that he wears were received after he left Madrid in 1812 and the alterations that are visible in the painting may have been made in May 1814, when Wellington returned there as Ambassador to Ferdinand VII.

Leandro Fern�ndez de Morat�n (1760-1828) was a Spanish dramatist and poet. A supporter of Joseph Bonaparte, he lived in exile in France after Bonaparte fell. Moliere, whose works he translated, was his literary model. His plays, satiric and psychologically acute, include El s� de las ninas [the maidens’ consent] (1806), for which he was denounced to the Inquisition. He was subsequently compelled to give up playwriting. He was a friend of Goya who painted his portrait twice, this one in Bilbao, and another in 1799 which is now in the Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid.

Juan Agust�n Ce�n Berm�dez was a Spanish art historian, author of the art encyclopedia published in 1800, which is one of the most important source of the history of Spanish art.

This painting (La lectura) was originally in the first floor room of the Quinta del Sordo.

This is Plate 56 from the series Los Caprichos.

The grandly dressed person raised aloft by a satyr in this plate is surely Godoy. Elevated over the globe by a symbol of lust, his phallic sword dangles at his side; two falling figures indicate that such successes are transitory and always come at the expense of others.

The attribution of this painting is debated.