Admiral José de Mazarredo

In 1785 Goya was still climbing. He designed tapestry cartoons for the royal factory and took portrait commissions where he could find them, and the run of piercing court portraits that made his name was still years off. The man at this table, José de Mazarredo, was one of Spain's ablest naval officers, a fleet commander and teacher of naval tactics who had fought in the American war and could fix a ship's position by the stars. He later gave the portrait to Manuel Godoy, the royal favourite who effectively ran Spain, and through Godoy's family it hung in a palace outside Madrid for most of the next century. The attribution is not fully settled. Long shown as Goya's own work, it has lately been read by some scholars as partly the product of his studio. The sitter, though, is sure, painted in the plain dark coat of a man who spent his life at sea.