'Goya and the Altamira Family'
This exhibition features Goya’s four portraits of members of the Altamira family, including the so-called Boy in Red, one of the Metropolitan Museum’s most beloved Old Master paintings.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art will reunite for the first time four portraits painted by Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) that were commissioned by the Count of Altamira, who was a director of the bank.
Goya and the Altamira Family will consist of Banco de España’s portrait of the Count of Altamira; the Metropolitan’s beloved Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga, the so-called “Red Boy;” the beautiful portrait of Manuel’s mother and sister, Condesa de Altamira and Her Daughter, María Agustina, from the Metropolitan Museum’s Robert Lehman Collection; and a portrait of Manuel Osorio’s brother Vicente Joaquin de Toledo, from a private collection. All four portraits were painted between 1786 and 1788 when Goya was beginning to experiment with aristocratic portraiture. A fifth portrait depicting Count Altamira’s middle son, Juan María Osorio, was painted around the same time by Agustín Esteve, one of Goya’s pupils, and will be lent by the Cleveland Museum of Art.
This exhibition features Goya’s four portraits of members of the Altamira family, including the so-called Boy in Red, one of the Metropolitan Museum’s most beloved Old Master paintings. Also on view will be a fifth Altamira portrait, by Agustín Esteve. This will be the first time these family portraits—now dispersed in public and private collections in Spain and the United States—will be seen together as a group.
Free lectures on Sunday, April 27: