Portrait of José Antonio Marqués de Caballero

Goya painted this in 1807, a year before Napoleon's armies crossed into Spain and the world this man belonged to fell apart. Jose Antonio Caballero was then Secretary of Grace and Justice, effectively the crown's minister of justice, and had just inherited his title from an uncle. Goya gives him the full apparatus of office: a black ministerial coat and a bright red waistcoat, both heavy with gold embroidery, and a deep red armchair to settle into. The face above all that gold is harder to flatter. Caballero kept his post under the French for a while, then followed the exiled court and died in 1821. The Budapest museum acquired the portrait in 1906.