Goya: Court Painter or Court Roaster?

If portraiture has a single unwritten law, it is this: the sitter must always appear handsome (or beautiful), intelligent, and possessed of great dignity.  This is simple common sense.  No one wrinkled enough to hold an eight-day rain wants to pay good money to have that image permanently recorded in oil.  In art (as in life), too much honesty can be ruinous.  Portraying folks too realistically is bad for business.

History is full of cautionary, confirmatory tales.  John Singer Sargent was all but exiled from Paris society after unveiling his portrait of Madame X.  Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Winston Churchill was despised by the prime minister and was later burned by Churchill’s wife.  Gilbert Stuart—whose Washington portrait is seen everywhere from classrooms to currency—lost the goodwill of early Americans after painting an unflinchingly accurate likeness of President John Adams.  Adams complained that the picture “has in it more of me than I quite like,” which may be the most polite way any man has ever said, “Good God, do I really look like that?”

Of course, the opposite problem could be just as dangerous.  Hans Holbein nearly lost his head after painting a flattering portrait of Anne of Cleves—so flattering that Henry VIII agreed to marry her, sight unseen.  When the king finally met Anne in person, he suspected fraud.  Holbein escaped prison only because Thomas Cromwell took the blame, and Cromwell (as was common with those who displeased Henry) eventually came to a far worse end.

Nowhere was flattery more desperately needed than in the case of Charles II of Spain, the last Habsburg ruler.  Claudio Coello’s official portrait tries valiantly to disguise the tragic results of centuries of royal inbreeding.  (Charles would have been less inbred if his parents had only been brother and sister.). If you compare it with a modern AI reconstruction, it’s painfully clear which image belongs in a museum and which belongs in a medical textbook.  The computer may actually be too kind.

 But to understand how royal portraiture could range from reverence to near-satire, we have to consider the two greatest group portraits in Spanish art: Velázquez’s Las Meninas (1656) and Goya’s Family of Charles IV (1800).  These two canvases—separated by 145 years—show not only different artistic temperaments, but two radically different worlds.

Velázquez painted at the height of Habsburg prestige.  Though Spain was beginning its long decline, the court still radiated majesty, ritual, and unshakable self-confidence.  Las Meninas reflects that atmosphere perfectly: elegant, mysterious, and composed with almost mathematical sophistication. (Click on the pictures for a larger image.)

Velázquez stands at his easel, and he’s calm, dignified, and almost aristocratic.  He wears the cross of the Order of Santiago, either painted later or anticipated by Velázquez himself.  His placement asserts the intellectual and social elevation of the artist.  He becomes nearly equal to the royal sitters, if not superior in subtle ways.

The Infanta Margarita stands bathed in soft light, attended by ladies-in-waiting, dwarfs, and a dog—all rendered with extraordinary dignity.  Velázquez elevates everyone.  Even those marginal to the court’s hierarchy are painted as individuals, not court amusements.  Las Meninas is portraiture as philosophy—the world ordered, luminous, and serene.

Goya painted the Bourbon monarchy in an entirely different Spain: one that was stagnant, anxious, and rattled by the aftershocks of the French Revolution.  Charles IV’s government depended increasingly on Manuel Godoy, the “Prince of Peace,” a court favorite whose influence far outstripped his abilities—and whose relationship with Queen María Luisa caused endless gossip.

Under such conditions, the conventions of royal portraiture begin to crack.  Goya’s Family of Charles IV is often called “the greatest group portrait since Las Meninas,” and it is—but with a decidedly sharper edge.

Where Velázquez stands tall and highly visible, Goya tucks himself into the dim left background, half-hidden, observant, and possibly judging.  His presence is subdued, almost ghostly.  The court he paints lacks the self-assured elegance of the Habsburgs.  Instead, his royals are arranged stiffly, awkwardly, like a family summoned for an emergency group photograph at the DMV.

Charles IV appears ruddy and mild-mannered, almost bovine in his gentleness.  María Luisa dominates the composition, larger, brighter, and forcefully present—precisely the impression foreign diplomats often recorded.  Goya didn’t invent the rumors about her alleged affair with Godoy:  he merely arranges the composition in a way that makes those whispers audible.

The princes and princesses are rendered honestly, without flattery.  No heroic light, no idealized profiles, no softened imperfections.  Goya paints people, not symbols (and in a royal portrait, that alone is subversive).

Goya was a court painter, meaning that his livelihood—and possibly his life—depended on royal favor.  He could not openly caricature the monarchy…But he didn’t need to do so:  Simply painting the royal family as they truly appeared was daring enough. His contemporaries would have caught every implication.

In the stiff poses, the theatrical lighting, the cluttered composition, and the glaring power dynamics, Goya offers a portrait of a dynasty pretending to be what it no longer is and probably never was.  Where Velázquez gives us natural majesty, Goya gives us the stage set of majesty—with the backstage ropes showing.

This is as close to open satire as a court painter could safely venture, and the miracle is that not only did Goya survive the experience, but he produced one of the most psychologically rich royal portraits in European art. 

Inevitably, we have to ask, “Is Goya laughing at them?”

Goya isn’t laughing at them in the way a caricaturist or political cartoonist would—but he is letting the viewer laugh—just a little—at the gap between how the Bourbons wished to appear and what they actually were.

He never crosses the line into open mockery (he valued his head too much for that), but he paints with a knowing eye…with the eye of a man who has seen too much of court life to believe in its pretensions.  His brush records every awkward truth:  Charles IV’s mild bewilderment, María Luisa’s dominating presence, the ill-arranged cluster of overdressed royals (who look more like actors in a provincial theater troupe than the heirs of the Spanish Empire).

So is Goya “laughing”?

Quietly and privately—yes.

Not with a grin, nor with a snicker, but with the wry, weary amusement of a court painter who has learned that truth sometimes mocks power simply by being shown.  His satire is not a joke at their expense:  it is the gentle, devastating humor of honesty without malice.