Selbstbildnis von Goya

In March 1815 Goya was called before the Inquisition, brought back the year before along with Ferdinand VII's absolute rule, and asked who had commissioned the two Majas and who had painted them. He was 69, first painter to a crown that had changed hands three times in seven years, and he had been deaf for more than 20 years.

He made two self-portraits that year. This is the smaller one, painted on wood, and it shows him in shirtsleeves with his hair loose and nothing on him that says court painter. The Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, which had elected him a member in 1780, has kept it since, and it is the portrait recorded in the inventory of his things drawn up after his death by his friend Antonio Brugada.

The other version, on canvas, is in the Prado.