Portrait du duc de Wellington

In August 1812 the Duke of Wellington rode into Madrid, having just broken the French army at Salamanca and pushed Napoleon's forces back across Spain. Goya, then the leading painter in the city, got him to sit almost at once. The awkward part was Goya's own recent past, since through the years of French occupation he had gone on working, painting for the men Wellington had just driven out. He kept altering this panel as the Duke collected honours, adding the Order of the Golden Fleece and a gold cross with three clasps by 1814. The face stayed wary, the eyes slightly wide. Long after, in 1961, the portrait went on show at the National Gallery in London and was taken from the wall by a thief 19 days later, missing for four years before it came back.