Scarlet Desire

The canvas brings together two male figures of distinct origins: on the left, a soldier, nearly naked beneath a red cloak; on the right, a refined young aristocrat holding a tricorne. The chiaroscuro, the vigor of the modeling, and the psychological tension of their gazes and gestures inscribe the work within the Goyaesque universe.

 Theatricalities of Masculinity

Inscribed in the manner of Francisco de Goya, this lineage points to an imaginary in which masculinity is never given but staged as a dramatic device: virility displays itself only to fracture, vulnerability surfaces beneath heroism, and masquerade — up to cross-dressing — deliberately blurs roles to reveal coded desire and unstable relations of power. Asensio Juliá (1760–1832), a Valencian painter active in Madrid and a collaborator of Goya, extends this vein by sharpening the theatricality of the masculine: games of inversion and de-costuming, an oscillation between pride and the exposure of the body, where social display becomes less a proof of identity than a scene of disquiet.

What could possibly unite these two men in this moment of troubling closeness?

Among the details of the composition, one element commands attention: a three-cornered hat, of military or naval use. The aristocrat already wears a broad-brimmed hat; this tricorne can therefore only belong to the soldier. Its presence in the other man’s hand suggests a gesture of promiscuity—as if one had seized upon an element of his companion’s attire, a gesture that here becomes the index of a shared surrender. From that moment on, the object changes its function: from a military emblem, it becomes the manifest sign of an amorous exchange, materializing the passage from authority to abandonment, from the public role to the sphere of desire.

A Soldier Undone

Sensuality pervades the painting through the partial nudity of the soldier. His powerful torso, exposed to the light, reveals taut muscles and a heaving chest; the belly is freed by the braies (a piece of cloth serving as undergarment or girdle, covering the hips and hanging low). The red cloak—color of blood and of carnal love—slips from his shoulder and dramatizes the scene. His hand resting on the hilt of the sword asserts his martial condition while adding an overt phallic charge.

The Gaze and the Smile

In contrast, the aristocrat, from another social rank, distinguishes himself through the elegance of his open shirt and embroidered waistcoat. Yet it is above all his face, tilted toward the viewer, that draws attention: his eyes glisten with an ironic, sensual spark, casting a knowing glance, like an invitation to share the secret of the moment. The whole is bathed in a contained seduction: the tricorne removed, the sword grasped, the fabrics slipping, the garments ajar—all signal a desire ready to be consummated.

A Silent Complicity

The work has sometimes been read as a meditation on two forms of honor—martial and aristocratic—but everything, in the soldier’s unveiled torso, the bold opening of the aristocrat’s shirt, the nearness of their bodies, and the silence laden with glances, suggests rather that it was an act of shared love, caught in the suspended moment of a silent complicity.

Echoes of Toledo

The Spain in which such a scene could have been imagined was a country of paradoxes — fervently Catholic, yet haunted by its own sensuality. The tension between devotion and desire, between discipline and the flesh, shaped both its art and its moral codes. From Goya’s time to our own, that struggle has not vanished, but transformed. Today, Spain stands among the few countries where love between men has moved from silence to recognition, supported by one of the world’s most progressive legal frameworks. This long passage — from repression to equality, from the furtive glance to the right to love openly — is a story in itself, one that will soon find fuller form in the Chronicles.