Bernardo de Iriarte

Goya painted this portrait in 1797 and signed it with a dedication along the bottom, to Don Bernardo de Iriarte, vice-protector of the royal fine arts academy, as a token of mutual esteem. Iriarte was a senior official who had championed Goya's career. A few years earlier, after the illness that left the painter permanently deaf in 1793, Iriarte had invited him to send the Academy some pictures painted freely, from his own imagination. That freedom was on Goya's mind right then. In these same months of 1797 he was drawing the biting satirical prints he would publish as the Caprichos. Here, though, he keeps to a formal portrait, the sitter turned toward us, alert and a little amused.