Carlo IV di Spagna

Goya painted this in 1789, the year Charles IV came to the Spanish throne after his father's death, and the same year a revolution broke out across the Pyrenees in France that would in time reach the Bourbons in Madrid. None of that shows here. The new king stands in red velvet and the collar of the Golden Fleece, calm and ordinary-looking, a half-hidden crown tucked behind the curtain at his side. Goya had just been named a painter to the king, and turning out official likenesses like this was part of the job. One detail dates it closely: the king still wears the sash of his late father, Charles III, before the new reign had fully settled its own image.