Consecration of Aloysius Gonzaga as patron saint of youth

Goya's Consecration of Aloysius Gonzaga as Patron Saint of Youth from 1763, now in the Saragossa Museum, is one of his earliest documented works, painted when he was only seventeen. The Jesuit saint Aloysius Gonzaga, who died of plague while nursing the sick in Rome in 1591 and was canonised in 1726, was particularly important to the Jesuit educational establishments that commissioned much of Goya's early work in Zaragoza. His training under José Luzán, a painter who had studied in Naples and brought Italian academic conventions to Aragon, is visible in the composition's formal arrangement and its reliance on conventional devotional poses. The Jesuit order was expelled from Spain in 1767, when Goya was twenty-one, removing a major source of religious patronage but not diminishing the Counter-Reformation devotional tradition that continued to dominate Spanish religious art. The Saragossa Museum's preservation of this early work keeps it in the city where Goya's career began, providing direct connection between the painter's Aragonese origins and the national significance his career eventually achieved.

The early technique shows Goya working within the conventions of Spanish provincial Baroque painting. The composition and coloring demonstrate competent craftsmanship while hinting at the dynamic energy and confident handling that would characterize his mature work.