Portrait of prince Aloys Wenzel von Kaunitz-Rietberg

This man reached Madrid in the summer of 1815, only weeks after Napoleon's final defeat at Waterloo. He was Prince Aloys Wenzel von Kaunitz-Rietberg, Austria's new ambassador to the Spanish court, sent to speak for Metternich's freshly rearranged Europe. Across his chest he wears the sash and star of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog, won on an earlier posting. If the portrait is really by Goya, then Goya made it near 70, stone deaf, and still official painter to a restored and vengeful King Ferdinand the Seventh. That "if" is the heart of the matter. The canvas dropped out of sight for generations and only resurfaced in a private collection in 1989. Since then some scholars, led by Manuela Mena, have accepted it as an autograph Goya, while others stay unconvinced, not helped by its worn and probably unfinished state. The sash itself is thin and undefined, exactly the sort of half-made passage that keeps the argument alive.