Vicente Lopez Portana Biography
Vicente López Portaña was born in Valencia on 19 September 1772.
As a young man, he began studying art with Antonio de Villanueva, a Franciscan, and later at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in Valencia. In 1789, his painting "King Hezekiah Displays His Riches" earned him a scholarship to complete his education at the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid. In 1790, he won first prize in a competition with the painting "The Catholic Kings Receive an Embassy from the King of Fez".
After remaining in Madrid for three years, influenced by the painters Francisco Bayeu, Mariano Salvador Maella and Anton Raphael Mengs, he returned to Valencia in 1792. In these years he painted the portrait of Ferdinand VII with the habit of the Order of Charles III and numerous portraits of French officers during the Spanish War of Independence.
His strong dedication to the monarchy meant that Ferdinand VII, with the Restoration of 1815, appointed him First Chamber Painter and drawing teacher of his second wife, Maria Isabella of Braganza, and later of his third wife, Maria Giuseppa Amalia of Saxony. López Portaña therefore moved permanently to Madrid, where he became a portrait painter much in demand among the aristocracy and upper middle class of the capital.
Among his best-known works are the portrait of the painter Francisco Goya from 1826 and the portrait of Ferdinand VII in the habit of the Order of the Golden Fleece from 1831. López Portaña died in Madrid on 22 July 1850, while holding the role as First Chamber Painter of Isabella II.
