Following these cartoons came several commissions to provide decorative paintings for churches. Goya executed them in the spirit of popular genre that inspired the cartoons. Not only had he no religious feeling; he was bitterly and openly opposed to the Church, and in these pictures of saintly legends was at no pains to simulate a reverence that he did not feel. To this period also belongs the _Portrait of Charles III_ of the Prado, which shows him in the costume of a huntsman, an angular figure with a genial but homely face. It is painted with uncompromising naturalness; the contours as hard and bold as the coloring; a picture separated from the Goya that we later know by a wide gap. The fact seems to be that in this portrait Goya was painting simply what he saw; and since the original was a man of commonplace exterior and Goya himself viewed him in a perfectly commonplace way he produced this astonishingly common-looking picture. It was necessary for Goya to discover some refinement in his own point of view, before he could develop his best artistic possibilities. The gradual steps by which he reached this goal I do not profess to know; but a few years later, when he had been established as Court painter to the new king, Charles IV, the true Goya is discovered. His new style, the result of a new way of viewing his subject, is fully developed in the group portrait of _Charles IV and the Royal Family_. We will postpone consideration of Goya’s mental attitude toward these royal puppets. That is part of his general outlook upon life, as a satirist and castigator of follies. It is his attitude toward his art which concerns us for the moment. The reproduction of this picture (p. 171) gives little but a limited idea of its artistic beauty, but it brings out the lack of human interest in, at least, the principal personages and the necessary stiffness of this arrangement of the figures. It will be noticed, however, that Goya has drawn the straggling items into some degree of unity by enveloping the lower part of the end groups in half-shadow. The eye is thus led to concentrate on the center of the composition. Here for an instant our attention may be occupied by the ungainly attitude of the Queen, and the forbidding expression of her face, turned, as in her other portraits by Goya, in one direction, while her eyes seek another. But it is only for an instant. Then we are attracted by the jewels in her dark hair and on her bosom, and by the exquisiteness of the costume--a fall of Chinese silk, mandarin blue, embroidered in white and gold, over a white lace skirt. Next our gaze may wander to the similar dresses worn by the princesses on her right, which however represent subtle variations of effect through the more or less of shadow in which they are veiled; and then to the king’s rose-embroidered vest, the pale blue and white watered silk ribbon, and the stars and jewels which cluster on the plum-colored velvet coat.