Goya and the Peninsular War

In 1808 Goya was sixty-two. For the past nine years he had been official court painter to Charles IV, and his reputation was firmly established as the foremost artist in Spain. The self-portrait etched as a frontispiece to Los Caprichos shows what he looked like around 1800. It is a strong face, reminding one a little of Oliver Cromwell, and it suggests a big and powerful man. There is a certain self-consciousness which makes it very much a portrait of “the master.” The mouth has a touch of arrogance, and in the sideways glance of the eyes is a hint of the satirical shrewdness that produced the merciless portrait of Queen Maria Luisa now in the gallery at Munich. Here, one would have said, is a man brimming with self-confidence and swagger, a likely hero for the legendary escapades of his youth. He is supposed, for example, to have fled from his home-town of Saragossa after leading a brawl between rival church factions; to have been involved in the political riots at Madrid in 1766, and to have been imprisoned in Rome for climbing at night into a convent in pursuit of a nun.