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| Jean Ranc Isabel Farnese, Queen of Spain 1723 Prado |
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| Jean Ranc Philip V, King of Spain 1723 Prado |
The tradition of the royal portrait in Spain was imported from France, where visual prototypes of grandeur had been codified once and for all under Louis XIV. French, Italian, and other foreign painters tended to monopolize courtly portraiture in Spain until late in the 18th century, when Goya ascended.
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| Jean Ranc Fernando VI as a child 1723 Prado |
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| Jean Ranc Charles III as a child 1724 Prado |
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| Louis Michel Van Loo Philip V, King of Spain ca. 1739 Prado |
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| Louis Michel Van Loo Isabel Farnese, Queen of Spain ca. 1739 Prado |
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| Louis Michel Van Loo Philip V and Isabel Farnese ca. 1743 Prado |
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| Louis Michel Van Loo Cardinal Infante Luis Antonio de Borbón ca. 1737 Prado |
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| Clemente Ruta Infanta Isabel de Borbón 1741 Prado |
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| Clemente Ruta Infanta Isabel de Borbón 1745 Prado |
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| Jean Baptiste Oudry Don José de Rozas y Meléndez de la Cueva, Count of Castelblanco ca. 1716 Prado |
"You should, my friend, compare me to those undisciplined hunting dogs who run indiscriminately after whatever game flies up before them; but as the subject has been raised, I must pursue it and consult one of our most enlightened artists about it. This ironic artist turns up his nose when I broach matters of the technique of his craft, as will be seen in a moment; but if he contradicts me, in the matter of the ideals of his art, I will have obtained my revenge. I would ask this artist –If you'd selected as a model the most beautiful woman known to you, and had rendered with the utmost care all her facial charms, would you think you'd represented beauty? If you answer me positively, the youngest of your students will refute you, and tell you that you'd produced a portrait. But if there's a portrait of a face, then there's a portrait of an eye, there's a portrait of a neck, of a throat, of a stomach, of a foot, of a hand, of a big toe, of a fingernail, for what is a portrait if not the depiction of a being in all its individuality? And if you do not recognize the portrait of the fingernail as rapidly, as confidently, and as unmistakably as the portrait of the face, this isn't because it doesn't exist, but because you've studied it less; because there is less of it; because its individualizing marks are smaller, more trifling and more fugitive. But if I turn my attention to this problem, if you do likewise, you will know more about it than you might think. You have grasped the difference between the general and the particular even in the least significant portions, for you wouldn't dare tell me you have ever, at any time since you first took up the brush, bound yourself to rigorous imitation of each and every strand of hair. You've adduced some and eliminated others; otherwise you would not have produced an image of the first order, a copy of the truth, but rather a portrait or a copy of a copy ..."
– Denis Diderot, from the Salon of 1767, translated by John Goodman, Yale University Press, 1995
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| Jean Baptiste Oudry Lady Mary Josephine Drummond, Countess of Castelblanco ca. 1716 Prado |
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| Mariano Salvador Maella María Luisa de Parma, Queen of Spain ca. 1789-92 Prado |
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| Mariano Salvador Maella Froilán de Berganza 1798 Prado |
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| Mariano Salvador Maella Carlota Joaquina, Infanta of Spain, Queen of Portugal 1785 Prado |