Francisco Goya The Family of Charles IV

We're in the Prado in Madrid, and we're looking at a large canvas by Francisco Boya. It's the family of Charles IV. There's a direct reference to Velazquez's Las Meninas. We can see the self-portrait a bit more in shadow than Velazquez painted himself behind a large canvas, pretty much at the same angle as one found in Las Meninas. The royal family arrayed before us, although in this case, the king and queen are here, not as a reflection in a mirror, but directly before us. I think that this strikes us today as unflattering. Some of the figures look more ideal in their poses and their faces than others, but there's certainly a way that the queen herself looks very much, I think, the way that she really looked, and even the king, to some extent. As opposed to a more idealized, more youthful figure. And I think that Boya is doing something quite extraordinary by pushing those boundaries, and the royal family is allowing him to. But while there is a particularity to the faces, and a kind of psychological depth to each of the faces, and a striking beauty in the representation of the children, the costume across this frieze of bodies is spectacular. The sense of the ornament, the sense of the military metals. Of the gold and the silver glittering in the light. And Boya has rendered it just brilliantly. Very loosely, in a very painterly way that's also very reminiscent of Velazquez. It's interesting that the royal family is looking, in a sense, back to Velazquez in this portrait, because this is a time that's quite different. Spain is in a crisis at this moment. The French Revolution has taken place. Royal families across Europe are wondering whether or not they're going to be able to maintain order, maintain their rule. And in fact, this family would not be able to. Fernando, who we see on the left in blue, colludes with Napoleon in Napoleon's invasion of Spain, and Napoleon will put his own brother on the throne of Spain very soon. So this is a royal family that doesn't have much longer. And it's hard not to read the Enlightenment in a different way that in the modern world we look upon royal families. We don't see them as having that kind of divine right and a bloodline that makes them different from us. And it's hard not to see that Enlightenment thinking in Goya's mind. We know, in fact, that he was sympathetic with the Enlightenment and the critique of the monarchy. There certainly is a kind of informality that almost feels a bit like disarray in the composition of the figures, different from the informality that one finds in Velasquez. I think it's interesting that Goya and the royal family are both looking back to that period and, in a sense, trying to recapture that at a moment when everybody is cognizant that Spain is at the threshold of a moment when there may be significant change. ♪♪