Goya and the Altamira Family from The Met Museum
$15
By Xavier F. Salomon Ever since its arrival at the Metropolitan as part of the outstanding collection of Old Master paintings bequeathed by New York financier and philanthropist Jules Bache, Goya’s portrait of Don Manuel Osorio, the three- or four-year-old son of the conde de Altamira, has ranked as one of the museum’s most popular paintings. In celebration of the reinstallation of the Metropolitan’s European Paintings galleries, inaugurated last May, the condesa de Altamira and her son have been temporarily reunited in a gallery devoted to Goya and his contemporaries in Spain. But from the outset this move was planned as just the first stage of a more eventful family reunion that would also include Don Manuel’s older brother, Vicente Osorio, and their father, Vicente Joaquín Osorio de Moscoso y Guzmán, conde de Altamira: all four pictures outstanding works by Goya.
