Don Francisco de Saavedra

For a few months in 1798, Francisco de Saavedra sat near the top of the Spanish government as minister of finance, while his friend Gaspar de Jovellanos held the office of state. It was Jovellanos who commissioned this portrait, as a companion to his own by Goya, now in the Prado. Goya shows Saavedra at a desk strewn with official papers, one hand resting on them, his body turned as if he is about to stand and get back to work. The arrangement mirrors the Jovellanos portrait, which shows its sitter at rest instead. Neither man kept his post for long. Within months both had fallen from power, and Jovellanos was eventually sent to prison on Mallorca.