Portrait of Manuel García de la Prada

The elegant man in this portrait was one of Goya's close friends and a serious collector of his work. Manuel García de la Prada was a magistrate of Madrid, and he owned five of Goya's most unsettling small paintings, among them the madhouse, the Inquisition tribunal and a procession of flagellants. When he died, those pictures went to the Academy of San Fernando, which is why we can still see them. Goya painted him around 1805 standing at ease, turned toward us with a faint dandy's confidence, in the dark coat and high white stock of a fashionable man of the day. The background is left plain, so nothing competes with the face and that level, appraising look.