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16 March 2024

9:00 AM

16 March 2024

9:00 AM

How the Spanish Empire Was Built: A 400 Year History Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo

Reaktion Books, pp.352, 25

In 1960, Felipe Fernández-Armesto and Manuel Lucena Giraldo tell us, Lucian Freud went to the Goya Museum in Castres in search of a particular painting. He wanted to create portraits that were character studies and ‘not mere likenesses’, and Goya’s collective portrait ‘La Real Compañía de Filipinas’,a study in human nullity that represented ‘absolutely nothing’, was just what he was looking for.

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