the human beings within it. Although their analyses are fairly acute, neither writer manages to determine much about the manner in which Goya's choices create meaning in the picture simply because they do not grasp the most basic facts about what is depicted.
Among the diverting and mysterious aspects of the painting Symmons included Goya's "having figures in strange costumes talk to each other in the foreground" and she considered the subject to be "a part of court life." Licht held that, if one were to make such a choice, the Junta would have to be considered Goya's "absolute masterpiece" because of its "perfect assimilation of technique and expressive purpose," yet he was also uncertain whether the men in the chairs were "groups of members" or merely spectators."
But, as Baticle has shown, this meeting of the company can be dated exactly and is indeed a singular moment in the company's history. In investigations conducted in the Archives of the Indies at Seville (which includes materials on all colonial matters) Baticle discovered the Junta's minutes of the meeting for March 30, 1815. From this material and an account of the meeting in the Gaceta de Madrid for April 8, 1815, Baticle not only established the presence of Ferdinand at the meeting but was able to demonstrate the "significance that [his] contemporaries attached to this unusual course of action." The presence of the king at such a meeting was a very unusual event. Symmons and Licht, in their lack of information, seem to have accepted Ferdinand's presence at the meeting as a usual proceeding and accordingly viewed the picture as depicting a normal aspect of court life and as nothing special in the history of the Junta. But, as Baticle found, one week after the event the company asked permission to adorn its meeting room with a painting which would "commemorate this solemn act for posterity." Permission was granted on April 20, 1815 and, Baticle speculat...