La Giunta delle Filippine

Goya painted this in 1815, and it is the largest canvas he ever made, yet its subject is a shareholders' meeting. It records the annual assembly of the Royal Company of the Philippines, a trading concern by then close to worthless, held in the years after Ferdinand VII came back to the Spanish throne and crushed the hopes of liberals like Goya. The king turned up unexpectedly, meaning his presence as a show of strength. Goya gives him the central chair but sinks him in a huge, dim, half-empty hall, the rows of shareholders lost in gloom along the sides. Instead of the power the occasion was meant to display, what fills the room is vacant space and stale light.