Portrait of Mariano Goya, the Artist's Grandson

By 1827 Goya was 81, deaf, and living out a self-imposed exile in Bordeaux in France, having left a Spain he no longer trusted under a harsh king. He set aside much of his pension for this grandson, Mariano, his only surviving descendant, and on a last visit to Madrid that year he painted him, a handsome, slightly cool young man not yet 21, dressed in the latest fashion. There is little of the old court formality left. The background is bare, the paint quick and thin, and all the attention falls on the young man's face and slightly wary eyes. Goya went back to Bordeaux and died there the following spring, so this is among the last portraits he ever made.