Porträt des Asensio Julià

In 1798 Goya was covering the dome of a small Madrid chapel, San Antonio de la Florida, with a crowd of ordinary Madrilenos painted as witnesses to a miracle. He did not work alone. Beside him was Asensio Julia, a younger painter from Valencia who assisted on the frescoes, and this portrait comes straight out of that job. Goya set him against bare wooden scaffolding, brushes and tools scattered at his feet, the props of a working painter rather than a gentleman. In the corner he wrote a few words in paint, calling Asensio his friend. The loose, quick handling, more suggested than finished, is the same freedom Goya was allowing himself up on the chapel ceiling that year.