Portrait of Juan Maria Osorio

Also known as: Juan Maria Osorio

About the Artwork

Esteve y Marques enjoyed a successful early career as a court painter and society portraitist, working as an assistant to the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya before becoming court painter to King Charles IV. The young subject of this portrait is Juan Maria Osorio, one of three sons of Don Vicente Osorio Moscoso Fernandez de Cordoba, the 13th count of Altamira, who also commissioned multiple family portraits from Goya. Esteve and Goya often shared aristocratic patrons, and there are also portraits of the count and his wife attributed to Esteve. The portrait of Juan Maria is somewhat static in execution, the subject lacking vigor and psychological intensity in Esteve's depiction. Yet some of the stiffness of the Cleveland portrait may be due to the fact that this work was probably a posthumous portrait of Juan Maria, who died in 1785 at the age of five.

Inscriptions

Inscribed at bottom: "EL Sr. Dn. JUAN MARIA, OSORIO, ALVAREZ. D TOLEDO; NACIO EN 28 DAGOSTO, D 1780 Y FALLECIO, EN."

Exhibition history

Art, A Means to World Understanding. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 16-April 10, 1949). In Memoriam: Leonard C. Hanna, Jr.. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (March 4-April 7, 1958). El Greco to Goya, A Loan Exhibition of Spanish Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Indianapolis Museum of Art at Newfields, Indianapolis, IN (organizer) (February 10-March 24, 1963); Rhode Island School of Design, Providence, RI (February 10-March 24, 1963). Juxtapositions. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (September 11-October 10, 1965). Goya and the Altamira Family. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (April 22-August 3, 2014).

Quick Overview

Artist: Agustín Esteve y Marques (Spanish, 1753–c. 1820)
Date: c. 1786
Medium: oil on canvas
Dimensions: Framed: 143.8 x 107.6 x 6.4 cm (56 5/8 x 42 3/8 x 2 1/2 in.); Unframed: 120 x 84 cm (47 1/4 x 33 1/16 in.)
Type: Painting
Classification: Painting
Department: European Painting and Sculpture
Credit line: Gift of the Hanna Fund
Accession no.: 1946.431

Provenance

Possibly Don Vicente Osorio Moscoso Fernandez de Corboba, Count of Altamira and Astorga. by 1864 Altamira Family (Madrid, Spain) - 1931 Private collection (Paris, France), sold to Joseph Duveen, 1931 1931-1946 Duveen Brothers (New York, New York), sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art, 1946.

Data retrieved from the Cleveland Museum of Art on October 8, 2026. The museum may have updated its record since.