Boceto para el retrato ecuestre de Manuel Godoy, duque de la Alcudia

The horse is rising into a levade, forelegs off the ground, and the rider holds the reins in one hand with the other on his hip. He is Manuel Godoy, 27 years old, chief minister of Spain and newly made Duke of Alcudia, in the uniform of commander of the royal life guards with the blue and white sash of the Order of Charles III. This is a small study for a monumental equestrian portrait that Goya was preparing in the summer of 1794. The big canvas is not known today, and after Godoy's fall in 1808 many portraits of him were destroyed. The study travelled instead. It appears to be listed in Goya's own household inventory of 1812, and it passed through Málaga, Paris and New York to a museum in Dallas, which sold it in 1986.