Juan Antonio Llorente

Goya painted this around 1810, while a French army occupied Spain and Napoleon's brother Joseph sat on the Spanish throne. The sitter, Juan Antonio Llorente, was a priest who had once been a secretary of the Spanish Inquisition, and who now, under French rule, was handed its secret archives and set to writing the first documented history of its cruelties. On his chest he wears the sash and star of a royal order granted by the occupying government. Both men had thrown in their lot with the French reformers, a choice that would cost them dearly once Spanish rule returned and both went into exile in Paris. Goya lights the intelligent, wary face and lets the black robe fall away into shadow.