Le Colosse

For most of its life this painting was one of Goya's, made around 1808 as Napoleon's armies poured into Spain and the country fell into a brutal war. A giant looms over the horizon, fists raised, while below him tiny figures and animals scatter in panic across the plain, the whole thing usually read as an image of a nation seized by fear of invasion. In 2008 the Prado announced that close study of the brushwork and a small set of initials pointed instead to Asensio Julia, a Valencian painter who worked alongside Goya, and the attribution has been argued over ever since, with leading Goya scholars rejecting the reasoning. So who exactly stood at the easel remains unsettled, which is why the catalogue record for this work needs a second look before it is published.