Don Manuel Lapeña, más tarde marqués de Bondad Real

1799 was a crowded year for Goya. In February he put the Caprichos on sale in a Madrid perfume shop, 80 etchings mocking priests, matchmakers and aristocratic vanity, and withdrew them within days. At the end of October the king made him First Court Painter. Somewhere between those two things he painted this full-length of Manuel Lapena, an officer of the royal guards, for the Duchess of Osuna, one of his steadiest patrons, who wanted it for her country house at the Alameda outside Madrid. Lapena would spend the following decade fighting the French invasion that Goya recorded in the Disasters of War. Here he is still in peacetime dress, and Goya has painted the hair powder that has drifted off his wig down onto his dark shoulders.