The Victorious Hannibal Seeing Italy from the Alps for the First Time

This oil sketch on canvas, 31.8 × 40.6 cm, is Francisco Goya's second preparatory study, painted in Italy around 1770–1771, for The Victorious Hannibal Seeing Italy from the Alps for the First Time, the large picture now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid; the sketch is in a private collection.

As a young, still unknown painter travelling in Italy, Goya entered a competition announced by the Academy of Fine Arts in Parma in May 1770. The subject was set in detail: Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, was to raise the visor of his helmet and turn toward a winged Genius who points him to the plains of Italy, his face showing joy and confidence in coming victories. Goya submitted his canvas in April 1771, signing his letter as a Roman pupil of Francisco Bayeu. He did not win; the gold medal went to Paolo Borroni, but the jury gave Goya an honourable mention, praising his handling of the brush and the bearing of Hannibal while faulting his colour and his adherence to the brief.

The sketch shows the composition nearly settled. Hannibal, lifting his visor, stands at the centre with a soldier and a huge wind-blown banner behind him, while a Genius with delicate butterfly-like wings points toward Italy. At lower left sit the bull-headed River Po and an old man wearing a crown, read either as a defeated Alpine chieftain or a personification of the Alps. In the finished painting Goya replaced the small wings with large angel wings, removed the old man and added Victory descending in her chariot with a laurel wreath. Sotheby's catalogue called the sketch the earliest known painting by Goya and noted its bold strokes and bright colour.

The sketch was once in a private collection in Zaragoza, then with the Garmendia-Herrero family in Villafranca de Ordizia. It was sold at Sotheby's New York on 28 January 2000 and was shown in Goya e Italia at the Museo de Zaragoza in 2008 and Goya: Order and Disorder at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 2014–15. Offered again at Sotheby's New York on 30 January 2020 with an estimate of $600,000–800,000, it sold for $1.82 million.