Ferdinand VII dans un campement

By the time Goya painted this, in 1815, Ferdinand VII had been back on the Spanish throne for a year, home from French captivity after six years of war against Napoleon, and busy tearing up the liberal constitution written in his absence and hunting the liberals who had fought in his name. Goya had worked through those years for whoever ruled Madrid, and now had to flatter the man restoring absolute rule. He barely bothered to look afresh: the king's head and the set of his legs are lifted straight from an earlier portrait, here re-dressed in a captain-general's uniform with the red sash of command. On the chest hangs the golden ram of the Order of the Golden Fleece.