堂·安德烈斯·德尔·佩拉尔

In 1798 Goya and the man in this picture were working on the same building, the little Madrid church of San Antonio de la Florida. Goya was up on the scaffolding covering the dome with frescoes, and Andres del Peral, an old friend, was gilding its woodwork, the same trade Goya's own father had followed. That summer Goya showed this portrait at the Madrid academy, and visitors admired how alive it felt. He spares Peral nothing: the receding grey hair, the sharp, almost sour stare, and a slight droop on one side of the face that later viewers have read as the mark of a stroke. The silvery coat is painted thinly, so the brown ground shows through and gives the cloth its worn shimmer.