Goya’s portraits, as we have said, are so numerous that it is only possible to deal here with a brief selection of them. In his large and varied gallery he displays so much versatility that it appears impossible that they could all have been conceived by the same mind and painted by the same hand. His treatment is alternately rough to the verge of violence and as smooth as the work of a miniaturist; his tones are crude and heavy or luminous and glowing, as the sitter appeals to his mind; he makes his queen a confessed harlot and his little grandson the incarnation of dainty boyhood. The portrait of his wife, now in the Prado, is a work of the highest excellence, so are the beautiful representations of the Duchess of Alba, the vivid impression of Asensi, the delicious portrait of the Marquesa de Pontejos, the Gainsboroughesque study of the Conde de Florida Blanca, the equestrian painting of General Palafox, the dashing, almost contemptuously vivid likeness of Godoy, the striking portrait of Guillemardet so enthusiastically eulogised by M. León Legrange (_Gazette des Beaux-Arts_), and those of the Duke of Osuna, of Felix Colón, Jove-Llanos and Ventura Rodriguez, of Martincho and Romero, the bull-fighters, of Pignatelly, General Urrutia, of the royal children, and of himself, painted when still young--each portrait bears the stamp of Goya’s genius, each expresses an individuality in his individual style, each is finished because its effect is true.
Goya’s portrait of the Duke of San Carlos, the most loyal friend of the son of Maria Luisa, has won the admiration of many painters and critics. The head is beautifully painted, the posing is natural and graceful, the figure lives and breathes. For this ‘miracle of art,’ as Viñaza styles it, Goya used only a few colours, which he spread over the canvas with an energetic and grandiose brush, each stroke being the expression of an æsthetic thought and the perfection of the technique of painting. The portrait, ‘which legitimises Goya’s descent from Velazquez,’ is said to be like the work of Rembrandt in its clare-obscure, of Watteau in its correctness, and of Titian in its delicacy and freshness. But there is no end to the expressions of admiration which Goya has inspired. Eduardo Rosales went to Zaragoza annually to visit Goya’s portrait of the Duke of San Carlos, and on one occasion, when he had been lifted by a friend that he might study the face of the portrait, he is reported to have exclaimed, ‘My friend, such painting will never be seen again.’