Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga

Francisco Goya · 1787

Don Manuel Osorio de Zuniga - Francisco Goya

A small boy in red silk stands very still, holding a pet magpie on a string, while three cats stare at the bird with hungry attention. Goya's "Red Boy" is charming at first glance and quietly unsettling at the second.

The story behind the painting

This full-length portrait was commissioned by the boy's father, Vicente Joaquín Osorio de Moscoso y Guzmán, conde de Altamira, a man of many titles and a director of the newly formed Banco de San Carlos. Goya had already painted Altamira as one of six dignitaries of that bank, and in 1786 he had been named painter to Charles III. Altamira then hired him for several family portraits. This one shows the youngest son, Manuel, born in April 1784. Wikidata dates the painting 1787, while Wikipedia gives 1787-88. Goya also portrayed Manuel's brother Vicente Isabel, and his mother, the condesa de Altamira, with the infant María Agustina. Manuel himself died at the age of eight, on June 12, 1792.

What to look for

Start with the boy. He is three or four years old, dressed in a red silk costume with white collar and cuffs, a silver satin sash and white shoes decorated with bows. His pale face and bright suit glow against a drab olive-brown background. In his hand is a string, tied to his pet magpie. Look closely at the bird's beak: it holds Goya's own visiting card, the painter's quiet signature. To Manuel's left sits a cage of finches. To his right, three cats watch the magpie with complete concentration. The canvas is large, 127 by 101.6 centimetres, so the child stands nearly at life scale among his animals.

Meaning and intent

Is this simply a sweet picture of a child with his pets? Many viewers have felt more beneath the surface, and the animals have been analysed in many different ways. One reading sees the caged birds as symbols of the innocent soul, and the cats as an evil force waiting nearby. Supporters of this view point to Goya's print The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, from his series The Caprices, where a cat appears among the creatures of the night. The magpie on its string, so close to the cats, can feel fragile. Knowing that Manuel died only a few years later, it is hard not to sense tenderness and danger held in the same moment.

Legacy

The portrait first hung with other family portraits in Altamira's palace in Madrid. It later passed through Paris, where the playwright Henri Bernstein owned it and drew on it for the stage design of his 1924 play La Galerie des glaces. In 1926 Kathryn Bache Miller fell in love with it at the gallery of the dealer Joseph Duveen, and her father Jules Bache acquired it; her decorator said she treated it almost like a living being. Bache bequeathed it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which has held it since 1949. Art historian Claus Virch called it one of the most appealing portraits of children ever painted. In 2014 the Met reunited Manuel with his family in Goya and the Altamira Family.

Lo sapevi?

Wikipedia · Wikidata

L'artista

Francisco Goya (1746-1828)

portrait · boy · Metropolitan Museum of Art · portrait · cat

Altre opere di Francisco Goya