Charles III of Spain

Goya painted Charles III in 1786, the same year he was appointed painter to the king. Charles III, who ruled Spain from 1759 to 1788, was the most effective of the Spanish Bourbon monarchs, presiding over extensive reforms in administration, infrastructure, and the arts. Goya's portrait was commissioned for the Bank of San Carlos and depicts the king in formal attire with the Order of the Golden Fleece. The painting represents Goya's gratitude to a monarch whose patronage had transformed his career. Charles died two years later, and his successor Charles IV proved far less capable. Now in the Bank of Spain headquarters, the portrait commemorates the last great reforming king of eighteenth-century Spain.

Goya renders the king with characteristic naturalism, refusing the idealization typical of royal portraiture to present Charles III as the approachable, physically unprepossessing figure he actually was.