José de Cistué y Coll

Goya painted this in 1788, the year the old king Charles III died. The sitter, Jose de Cistue y Coll, was an Aragonese jurist, and the commission came from the University of Huesca, which wanted his portrait among its faculty. Goya actually made two: a full-length for the university and this half-length that stayed nearer the family in Zaragoza. He kept the receipt, signing in Madrid in June 1788 for 3,044 reales for the portrait he had painted by the university's order. At this point he was still climbing, and within a year he would be named painter to the king's chamber. The full-length twin passed down for generations before the regional government bought it, only recently, for a public museum.