Leandro Fernández de Moratín

Goya painted his friend the playwright Leandro Fernandez de Moratin in 1799, a busy year for the artist. That same year he published the Caprichos, his biting set of etchings on Spanish folly, and was named First Court Painter. Moratin noted the sitting in his diary that July, just 'to Goya's house: portrait.' The two were close, both sharp-minded men skeptical of the old order. Goya sets the writer against a plain dark ground, the light picking out a wary, intelligent face. Their story ended far from Madrid. Moratin backed the French during the Napoleonic occupation, and both men died in exile in France in 1828, within two months of each other.