San Cristóbal

In 1767 Francisco Goya was 21, an ambitious young painter from Zaragoza who had not yet made his name. He had already failed to win prizes at the royal academy in Madrid, and within two years he would set off to study in Italy. Very little survives from these earliest years, which is part of what makes this Saint Christopher unusual. It shows the giant saint of old legend wading across a river with the Christ Child on his shoulder and a staff to steady himself. The picture belonged to a Zaragoza businessman, Juan Martin de Goicoechea, and only in 2013 did a scholar identify the young Goya's hand behind it.