Another Brother for Goya’s “Red Boy”: Agustín Esteve’s Portrait of Francisco Xavier Osorio, Conde de Trastámara

Abstract

The exhibition “Goya and the Altamira Family,” held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art from April 22 to August 3, 2014, brought together for the first time four portraits by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes painted about 1787 – 88. For the occasion, the celebrated “Red Boy” in the Museum’s collection was displayed together with likenesses of his parents and two of his siblings in a gallery of the European Paintings Department. Goya’s portrait of the head of the family, Vicente Joaquín Osorio de Moscoso y Guzmán, conde de Altamira (Figure 1), was paid for on January 29, 1787, and was the first of the artist’s Altamira paintings.1 Commissioned by the Banco de San Carlos (renamed Banco de España after 1829), of which Altamira was a director, the portrait is still in the bank’s collection. In the succeeding two years, the count commissioned Goya to paint three portraits for the family’s palace on the calle de la Flor Alta in Madrid: the Metropolitan Museum’s full-length portrait of Altamira’s first wife, María Ignacia Álvarez de Toledo, with their infant daughter María Agustina (Figure 2), and their sons Vicente Isabel, conde de Trastámara (Figure 3), and Manuel, señor de Ginés (Figure 4), the “Red Boy.” Inventories of the Altamira collection reveal that family portraits by other artists hung in the palace as well. The postmortem inventory of the conde de Altamira, compiled between January 7 and February 8, 1817, lists a series of portraits of the count and his family, including an image of the count on horseback by Antonio Carnicero (1748 – 1814) and, in one room, “eight portraits of the family of the Count of Altamira.”2 A subsequent inventory, compiled on March 13 – 14, 1864, after the death of Vicente Pío Osorio de Moscoso y Ponce de León (the grandson of the conde de Altamira in Goya’s portrait [Figure 1]), lists in detail Goya’s portraits of the Altamira family along with those by a number of other painters.3 The equestrian portrait of the count by Carnicero was still in the palace, as was another portrait of him attributed in the inventory to Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716 – 1780).4 Two of the three Goya portraits — those of the countess with her daughter María Agustina (Figure 2) and the “Red Boy” (Figure 4) — are also listed, while for some unknown reason, the portrait of Vicente, conde de Trastámara (Figure 3), is not mentioned in the document.5 Another portrait by Goya, that of the architect Ventura Rodríguez, now in the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, was also acquired by the Altamira family before 1864.6 The Altamiras owned a substantial group of family portraits by the Valencian painter Agustín Esteve y Marques (1753 – ca. 1820), who in the 1780s and 1790s collaborated with Goya, especially on portraits, and became a wellknown portraitist himself. According to early sources, he produced fourteen portraits for the family of the duke of Osuna and others for the dukes of Alba.7 Esteve must also have painted a significant number of portraits for the Altamira family. The Altamira inventory of 1864 documents several of them, including a set of portraits of the count and countess, and another single image of the count.8 It is unclear if one of these portraits of the conde de Altamira could be a version of the one signed by Esteve that is at present in the Universidad de Granada (Figure 5), or if the portrait of the countess can be identified with the one that was in the collection of José Calvo in Madrid in 1957.9 Five additional paintings of children by Esteve are listed in the 1864 Altamira family inventory. One of these portraits was oval in format and represented the daughter of the duque de Montemar with a small dog.10 Another portrayed a “girl with a tambourine in her hand, seated on a cushion.”11 Three of the canvases clearly represented four of the Altamira children. The first included a double portrait of Vicente, conde de Trastámara, and his sister María Agustina (both children were also portrayed by Goya: see Figures 3 and 2).12 The second and third were images of Francisco Xavier and Juan María, brothers of Vicente, Manuel (the “Red Boy”), and María Agustina.13 Another Brother for Goya’s “Red Boy”: Agustín Esteve’s Portrait of Francisco Xavier Osorio, Conde de Trastámara