Carlo IV in uniforme da colonnello delle Guardie del Corpo

Goya made this full-length in 1800, the year he was assembling the sprawling group portrait now in the Prado, The Family of Charles IV. He painted the royals one at a time first, and this is the king on his own, in the blue-and-red uniform of a colonel of the royal bodyguard, hat in hand, decorations crowding his chest. Queen Maria Luisa was pleased with how the sittings were going. In a letter that June to Manuel Godoy, the family's powerful favourite, she reported that Goya had finished her portrait, which people were saying was the best of all of them.