General Jose de Palafox

Rank held by command rather than by birth

Most of the mounted portraits in this register raise a man who was already above the viewer: a king, a duke, a favourite. This one names a general. The device is unchanged — the animal supplies height and mass, the sitter supplies composure — but the claim underneath it is different in kind. A commander's right to be shown mounted rests on a job rather than on a line of descent, and the horse in such a picture reads closer to working equipment than to ceremonial furniture, even when nothing in the scene is being done with it.

What the record holds

The catalogue gives 1814 as the date of creation and the Museo del Prado in Madrid as the location — one of eleven works in this register recorded at that collection. The dimensions are 248 x 224 cm, close to two and a half metres in the larger direction and near enough to square to belong with the largest state portraits catalogued here. Romanticism is the recorded style and Spanish the nationality attached to the painter. It is filed under portraiture, male portraiture, Animal Art > Horse and a mythology heading, and the measured colour family of the image is neutral.

A word about the mythology tag

Mythology appears on a great many entries in this catalogue, including portraits of living men. It is a subject-tagging artefact rather than a statement about content, and this register reports it without treating it as evidence.