ホセ・デ・トロ・イ・サンブラーノの肖像

In 1785 Goya was 39 and still climbing. He had not yet become first court painter, but he landed a steady commission from the Banco de San Carlos, the national bank that would later become the Bank of Spain, to portray its directors. This was the first of six such portraits he painted for the bank over about four years. The sitter, Jose de Toro y Zambrano, was a wealthy financier born into the colonial elite of Chile, shown in a red coat with one hand tucked into his waistcoat. Goya keeps it plain and exact, the sober manner Anton Raphael Mengs had made fashionable at the Madrid court. A restoration finished in 2024 stripped away a medal that a later hand had added to the sitter's chest, returning the picture to what Goya left.