Goya

Goya as a Spanish Casanova?

They were contemporaries after all... When Francisco Goya painted his infamous La maja desnuda ("The Nude Maja") between 1798 and 1800, it would get him in trouble with the Inquisition (in 1815), whom he despised. This is his only erotic painting that we know of.

It is fascinating to think of Goya painting this after going deaf (in 1792), while juggling a wife and possibly mistresses, just as Casanova was dying and not long before Beethoven himself went deaf.

The nude model in question is a subject of debate. One view is that she was Prime Minister Godoy's mistress (and later wife), Pepita Tudó (Josefa de Tudó, 1st Countess of Castillo Fiel). She lived to be 90. Is it important that we know who the model was? Not really. But, these paintings are windows on to the complicated lives of some extraordinary women and I think that's important.

The other possible model was the Duchess of Alba (María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Alvarez de Toledo y Silva Bazán). She was, by all reports, an extraordinary woman, and extremely wealthy, but art historians get upset by speculation that she and Goya had an affair. True, there is only scanty evidence to support such claims. She died only a few years later, in mysterious circumstances, in 1802, barely 40 years old.

Goya kept this painting in his possession till his death in 1828 at the age of 82. Here it is in the Prado with its sister painting.