The Marqués de Sofraga

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, 1746–1828

Francisco de Goya was an artist of remarkable talents, responsible for works ranging from altarpieces to nudes, from brutally realistic images of war to the horrifying and visionary scenes of his print series. The most highly sought portraitist in Madrid, Goya served as the official painter to the Spanish Court.

The Marqués de Sofraga, among the most powerful of Goya’s portraits, was probably commissioned to celebrate the sitter’s appointment as director of the Royal Academy of History in 1794. The Marqués is shown in his most official attire, but as in the greatest of portraits, Goya mitigates between his own artistic ambitions and the visual propaganda desired by the sitter. The sitter’s medals, for example, would have been immediately recognizable to contemporaries as markers of status, but Goya has painted them in an almost impressionistic technique; the Golden Fleece at Sofraga’s breast is reduced to daubs of paint.

Likewise, while there can be no question of the sitter’s importance, there is something chilling in the Marqués’s heavy-lidded gaze. Goya’s penetrating view of human psychology – fully evident in this masterpiece – has few equals in the history of portraiture.

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