Self-Portrait Holding an Academic Study

In 1746 Madrid did not yet have a royal academy of art, only the beginnings of one. Since 1744 a preparatory board had been training young painters, and Luis Meléndez, then about 30, was one of its students. He wears a green velvet coat over a frilled shirt, with a ribbon tied in his hair, and holds up a large sheet showing a male nude seen from behind. It is an academy study drawn from a posed model, the proof of a figure painter's training. In his other hand is a porte-crayon, a holder for chalk. He signed and dated the canvas 1746. Two years later his father, a painter who had quarrelled with the board's leaders, lost his teaching post, and Meléndez was expelled. The Louvre calls this one of the rare portraits by a man now remembered for still lifes.