Queen María Luisa on horseback

In 1799 Goya was made first court painter, and one of his early tasks was this pair of equestrian portraits of the king and queen. Maria Luisa wears the blue-and-red uniform of a colonel of the royal guard and sits astride a horse named Marcial, a gift to her from Manuel Godoy, the young favourite who had risen to run the government and was widely rumoured to be her lover. The letters she exchanged with Godoy while Goya worked survive, full of her pride at having trained the animal herself. The whole composition looks back to Velazquez, whose royal riders Goya had copied as etchings back in 1778.