Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes: Don Ramón Satué (1823); Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.

From its start in the 19th century, the core of the Rijksmuseum collection has primarily consisted of Dutch art. One reason for this is that the Netherlands was a republic until 1815. Consequently, the new Dutch national museum didn’t have huge royal (more internationally orientated) collections at its disposal, like for example the Prado (Philips II) or the Hermitage (Catherine the Great). A second reason is that he Rijksmuseum was deliberately founded as a ‘treasure chamber of Dutch art and history’, which is the policy until the present day.
One of the great exceptions to that principle is this portrait dating from 1823 by the Spanish artist Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828). It depicts Don Ramón Satué, a judge in the Supreme Court in Madrid. Goya knew Satué very well and hence didn’t create an official portrait suitable to the man’s status, but an informal painting of a ‘normal’ individual; the judge wears casual clothes and even sticks his hands into his pockets. Such a relaxed depiction of a high-ranked person was unusual around 1823 and can in historical perspective be considered as ‘modern’.