The portrait features life sized depictions of Charles IV of Spain and his family, ostentatiously dressed in fine costume and jewelry. Foremost in the painting are Charles IV and his Queen María Luisa de Parma, who are surrounded by their children and relatives. The family are dressed in the height of contemporary fashionable clothing, and lavishly adorned with jewelry and honors such as sashes.

The painting was modeled after Louis-Michel van Loo's 1743 Portrait of Felipe V and his Family and Velázquez's Las Meninas, setting the royal subjects in similarly a naturalistic and plausible setting as they pose for the artist who is visible at his easel at the left of the canvas. Unlike these earlier depictions which sought to flatter their subjects, Goya's group portrait is unflinchingly realist, sometimes grotesquely so, both in detail and tone.

The French writer Theophile Gautier called it a 'picture of the corner grocer who has just won the lottery' and it has sometimes been believed that Goya was in some way satirising his subjects. The idea has been dismissed however by the art critic Robert Hughes: "This is nonsense. You didn't manage to keep your job as an official court portraitist if you were satirising the people you were painting. No, this is not a send up. If anything it is an act of flattery. For instance on the left, in the blue suit, is one of the most odious little toads in the entire history of Spanish politics, the future King Ferdinand VII, whom Goya actually manages to make quite regal. God knows how he did it, but he has. This is very much an act of respect, almost verging on an act of flattery."

According to wikipedia.