Portrait of Juan José de Arias Saavedra y Verdugo

Goya painted this portrait around 1794, not long after the illness that changed his life. In the winter of 1792 and 1793 he had collapsed with a mysterious sickness that nearly killed him and left him permanently deaf, shut out of ordinary conversation for the rest of his career. As he found his footing again he returned to work like this. The sitter, Juan José de Arias Saavedra, came from Atienza in the province of Guadalajara, and he moved in the circle of Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, the writer and reformer who was one of the leading figures of the Spanish Enlightenment. Goya keeps it plain: a dark coat, a white shirt, a paper held in one hand, the face lit but the eyes turned slightly away from us. The portrait belonged to Jovellanos himself and has passed down through his descendants.