Vicente López y Portaña served as an honorary court painter (alongside Goya, whose portrait he painted in 1826) for Charles IV before being officially appointed under Ferdinand VII (1784-1833) and, eventually, Queen Isabella II (1830-1904), for whom he worked until his death. He was known as one of the best portraitists of his day, as well as a painter of allegories and religious scenes. He was also celebrated for his mastery of drawing, a result of his Neoclassical training. Indeed, Ferdinand VII appointed him the drawing instructor to his second and third wives (the Queens María Isabella of Portugal and Maria Josepha of Saxony, respectively).  Although this exhibition is limited to the works López created for his first royal patron, Charles IV, they are excellent examples of the artist’s output and range of skills in terms of medium and genre. The Portrait of Baron Mathieu de Faviers from 1812, in which the sitter, in full military dress, addresses the viewer directly, is just the kind of beautifully painted, assertive aristocratic portrait for which López’s talents were sought.  By contrast, the artist employed a loose, fluid style to animate the story of Saint Vincent Martyr Before Dacius (ca. 1796) with the colorful movement of muscles and drapery. López painted the Zaragozan saint, martyred in the 4th century during the persecutions of Diocletian, at the moment in which he appeared before the local Roman governor, Dacius, who imposed numerous heinous tortures on the saint before his execution. Its humble size and sketchy quality suggest that López created this work in preparation for a larger-scale ecclesiastical commission, offering some insight into how the artist developed his composition.

Similarly, a pair of delicate drawings created in the first half of the 19th century and featured in the exhibition demonstrate López’s renowned accomplishment as a draughtsman. They depict the four most important, or cardinal, virtues in Christian tradition - Prudence, Justice, Temperance and Fortitude - represented as four female figures (two per sheet). These popular allegorical figures appear elegantly draped and may be identified by their traditional attributes: a mirror and a sword (Prudence and Justice) and wine/water jugs and a column (Temperance and Fortitude).

Through the Meadows collection, this exhibition offers a representative summary of the quality and breadth of artwork produced during the relatively short reign of Charles IV, within his court and by artists he patronized. Alongside the opulent royal collections, however, many of the paintings and works on paper featured in this exhibition, particularly those by Goya, invite viewers to consider an opposing view of art and life in turn-of-the-19th-century Spain - prostitutes (Los Caprichos), the mentally ill (Yard with Madmen), and the dead (The Garrotted Man, 1778-80 and Still-Life with Woodcocks, 1808-12). It was perhaps a foreshadowing of the fact that Spain was about to be riddled by war and the monarchy itself forced into exile. 
This exhibition is organized by the Meadows Museum and has been funded by a generous gift from The Meadows Foundation.