Portrait of Pedro Gil de Tejada

Around 1794 Francisco Goya was picking up his brushes after a catastrophe. A severe illness two years earlier had left him permanently deaf in his late 40s, and it changed both his mood and his painting. This dignified seated man in black, a shaft of light warming his face out of a dark ground, belongs to the run of Madrid portraits Goya took up again in these years, many of them tied to the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, whose circle he moved in. The sitter is traditionally identified as Pedro Gil de Tejada, a banker of that world, though the name is not entirely secure. His hands are barely sketched, as if Goya fixed the alert, sceptical face first and left the rest waiting.