The portrait features life-sized depictions of Charles IV of Spain and his family, ostentatiously dressed in fine costume and jewellery.

The group portrait was completed the year after Goya first became court painter, the highest position available to a Spanish artist and one previously occupied by Diego Velázquez.

[4] Goya seems to focus his attention on three figures: the Prince of Asturias, i.e. the future Fernando VII, who is dressed in blue, his mother Queen Maria Luisa of Parma, standing in the centre, and King Charles IV.

[3] As in Las Meninas, 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 Velázquez's work is replaced here by a sense of, in the words of Gassier, "imminent suffocation" as the royal family are presented 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!

Others are, left to right: The French writer Theophile Gautier called it a 'picture of the corner grocer who has just won the lottery' and it has sometimes been suggested that Goya was in some way satirising his subjects.

For instance on the left, in the blue suit, is one of the most odious little toads in the entire history of Spanish politics, the future King Ferdinand VII, whom Goya actually manages to make quite regal.

"[8] Granted, the queen's inane smile (formed by crude dentures), her sagging, pallid skin contrasted with sumptuous gown and jewels, and her overall appearance of doddering senescence, provide satirical fodder.