Art News

Unknown portrait discovered under Goya’s masterpiece in Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum

AMSTERDAM.- An innovative method for examining paintings has revealed a hitherto unknown painting beneath Goya’s Portrait of Don Ramón Satué, one of his most celebrated masterpieces and the only painting by this famous Spanish artist in The Netherlands. The hidden portrait, which is almost certainly also by Goya himself, was brought to light using Scanning Macro X-ray Fluorescence Spectrometry a new technique developed by the University of Antwerp and the Delft University of Technology. From the scans it can clearly be seen that Goya (1746-1828) painted his portrait of the casually-posed Spanish judge, Ramón Satué, over a much more formal portrait of a man wearing uniform. The decorations embellishing the uniform are those of the highest ranks of a chivalric order instituted by Joseph Bonaparte when his brother, the emperor Napoleon, created him King of Spain. The hidden portrait must thus date from between 1809 and 1813. Goya’s portrait of Satué is signed and d