Luis María de Borbón y Vallabriga

This boy is the son of a Spanish prince who had fallen out of favour. His father, the Infante Don Luis, was a brother of the king, but he had married a woman beneath his rank, and the marriage cost him his place at court and cost his children the royal name. The family lived away from Madrid, at a country house at Arenas de San Pedro, and it was there in 1783 that Goya came to paint them. Luis María is six here, dressed in the deep Bourbon blue of the court, and he stands at a little table over a jigsaw map of Europe, a piece in one hand and a pair of compasses in the other. The schoolroom props suit a child being raised for a serious future. He would grow up to become a cardinal.