Portrait of Ferdinand VII in his royal coat

By 1815 Ferdinand VII was back on the Spanish throne, and Spain was a harder place for it. Welcomed home the year before as the Desired One, he had promptly torn up the liberal constitution written at Cádiz, restored absolute rule and brought back the Inquisition. Goya was still first court painter, and he painted, without much affection, the king who had undone the reforms he had once hoped for. He turned out several of these stiff official likenesses. This one, ordered by the public body in Zaragoza that ran the Imperial Canal of Aragon, shows Ferdinand upright in his ermine mantle and regalia, the face guarded and heavy-lidded above all that ceremony.