Portrait d'Ignacio Garcini y Queralt

Goya finished this in 1804, four years before French armies poured over the Pyrenees and turned Spain into the war he would later paint at its ugliest. For now the sitter is calm — Ignacio Garcini, a brigadier in the Corps of Engineers, the men who built Spain's roads, bridges and fortifications. Look at the red cross on his chest and the badge of the Order of Santiago. Garcini received both honours in 1806, two years after he posed, so they were added to the finished picture later. Goya painted his wife, Josefa, as a companion piece, and the two portraits were meant to hang together, husband and wife facing one another.