A Share in the Bacchanal

Francisco Goya was 54 and at the height of his fame and powers in 1800 when, as first court painter, he was called on by his sovereign, King Charles IV, to immortalize the royal family. The shimmering panorama that Goya created has been called his supreme tour de force. With devastating candor, he laid bare the indolence of the King, the shallow depravity of Queen Maria Luisa (whose intrigues on behalf of her lover Godoy had reduced the Bourbon court to its final debility), and the self-centered vacuity of their relations. In imitation of Velasquez' 1656 portrayal of the royal maids of honor, Las Meninas, Goya painted himself into the picture as a prim, critical observer at his easel on the left of the picture.

But that was not all--though it has taken over a century and a half to discover the second Goya in the Goya. Last June, Madrid's Prado Museum decided to have The Family of Charles IV cleaned and rebacked with a fresh canvas. When the first layer of grime was removed the Prado's assistant director, Xavier de Salas, made a startling discovery. In the upper left-hand corner, a dark picture hanging on the palace wall turned out to depict a nude man and two seminude women. The man is caressing one woman's thighs, and his face, though youthful, dark and gaunt with the strain of the bacchanal, is, says De Salas, "Goya, without any doubt."

The master caricaturist often made himself a subject, and his distinctively blunt features can be seen in many of his paintings and drawings. But his second presence in The Family of Charles IV gives ironical depth to an already profound picture. By stripping away his own mask of detachment and presenting a self as warped by passion as any of his royal subjects, the artist seems to suggest that whatever frailty they symbolize, it is one that he cannot pass judgment upon.

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