Self-portrait

Goya painted this in 1815, at 69, and spared himself nothing. The long war against Napoleon's armies had ended the year before, and Ferdinand VII was back on the Spanish throne, undoing the reforms and bringing back the Inquisition, which that same year called Goya in to answer for his naked Maja. He had watched all of it while stone deaf, as he had been for over 20 years. There is no uniform, no room, no flattery here, only a head and shoulders turning toward us out of the dark. He worked up two versions of the face at the same time. The other one, on canvas, is in the Prado. This panel came to the Academy later, given by his son to settle an old debt.