Goya has painted his own portrait as he was during an illness in his old age. The ailing artist sits upright in an olive-green dressing gown; his face is pale and is hands clutch at the sheet against which the carmine blanket glows as the most vivid color element in the painting. He is surrounded and supported by his physician who offers him medicine in a clear glass. The background is both dark and dense, revealing two shadowy figures behind Dr. Arrieta's elbow.

An inscription runs along the bottom border of the canvas, forming a kind of ledge or barrier. It reads in translation: "Goya thankful, to his friend Arrieta: for the skill and care with which he saved his life during his short and dangerous illness, endured at the end of 1819, at seventy-three years of age. He painted it in 1820."