The Spanish Wedding

When Fortuny showed this in Paris in 1870 it caused a sensation. A wedding party gathers in the sacristy of a Spanish church to sign the register, everyone in elaborate 18th-century dress, painted with a jeweller's precision down to the last button and fold of silk. Fortuny had begun it in Rome and finished it in Paris, and his fascination with Goya runs all through the crowd of onlookers. The picture sold almost at once to a collector, Adele Cassin, for 70,000 francs, among the highest prices a living artist's work had fetched to that point, and dealers and imitators chased his style for years afterward. Fortuny was Catalan, widely called the finest Spanish painter since Goya himself. He was 32, and had just four years left to live.