Charles IV in his Hunting Clothes

Goya painted this in 1799, the year he was made First Court Painter and stood at the top of the Spanish court. His subject, King Charles IV, was by most accounts a man who preferred hunting to governing, and Goya shows him in shooting dress, gun in hand, a little heavy around the middle, his stare mild and unfocused. A dog leans in and sniffs at him, a quiet nod to Titian's grand portrait of the emperor Charles V with his hound, which hung in the same royal collection. The costume itself echoes Velazquez's hunting portraits of an earlier Spanish king. Within a decade, Napoleon would force this comfortable sportsman off his throne.