Carlos IV of Spain and His Family is oil on canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya completed in the summer of 1800. It features life sized depictions of Charles IV of Spain and his family, pretentiously dressed in fine costume and jewellery. The painting was modeled after Velazquez's Las Meninas when setting the royal subjects in a naturalistic and reasonable setting.
As in Las Meninas, the royal family is actually paying a visit to the artist's studio, while Goya can be seen to the left looking outwards towards the viewer. In both, the artist is shown working on a canvas, of which only the rear is visible.
However, the atmospheric and warm perspective of the palace interior of Velazquez's work is replaced in the Goya by a sense of, in the words of Gassier, "imminent suffocation" as the royal family are presented by Goya on a "stage facing the public, while in the shadow of the wings the painter, with a grim smile, points and says: ‘Look at them and judge for yourself!’
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