Circles of Enlightenment: Goya y sus amigos in the 1790s

Goya’s portraits of the writer Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, the poet and jurist Juan Melendez Valdes, and the playwright Leandro Fernandez de Moratin are often cited as testimony of his friendships with these and other intellectuals and writers of his day. In fact, the nature of these inferred relationships is little known. This chapter examines Goya’s interactions with these men, as well as the relationships among the men themselves during the 1790s, against the backdrop of the evolving court of Carlos IV.