Church of San Juan el Real

Look up at the crossing of San Juan el Real in Calatayud, a town in western Aragon, and you see four Fathers of the Church on the curved pendentives beneath the dome. Gregory wears the papal tiara, and beside him are Ambrose, Augustine and Jerome. They are oil paintings on canvas fixed to a wooden frame, made around 1766, and since 1984, when the historians José María Arnaiz and Rogelio Buendía proposed his name, they have been generally accepted as early work by Francisco de Goya, then about 20 years old.

The church was built for the Jesuits and dedicated to the Virgin of the Pillar, and it was being enlarged and redecorated between 1747 and 1767. That year the Jesuits were expelled from Spain, and the parish of San Juan soon moved in from its ruined medieval church, bringing its name along. The brick façade is plain, and the bell tower in the local Mudéjar manner was added in the 1770s.

Also kept here is a tall, narrow canvas of the Assumption of the Virgin with Saint Íñigo, the abbot born in Calatayud, which some catalogues place among Goya's earliest works, though its attribution remains open.