A woman turns towards someone or something outside of the picture. She wears an elaborate lace shawl and headdress, known in Spain as a mantilla, the transparency of which is brilliantly conveyed.
The sitter is Doña Isabel de Porcel, according to an inscription on the back of the original canvas. Goya exhibited a portrait of Doña Isabel at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid in 1805, a year before he painted a portrait of her husband. When an X-ray image was made of this painting during conservation treatment in 1980, another portrait was unexpectedly found underneath – you can just make out the dark curve of an eyebrow on Doña Isabel’s chin and the stripes of a jacket through her right sleeve.
Despite being painted with great flair and long considered one of Goya’s most dazzling portraits, doubts have recently been cast over whether it really is by Goya.
Text extracted from the ‘Provenance’ section of the catalogue entry in Neil MacLaren, revised by Allan Braham, ‘National Gallery Catalogues: The Spanish School’, London 1988; for further information, see the full catalogue entry.
C. Baker and T. Henry, The National Gallery: Complete Illustrated Catalogue, London 2001
If you know more about this painting or have spotted an error, please contact us. Please note that exhibition histories are listed from 2009 onwards. Bibliographies may not be complete; more comprehensive information is available in the National Gallery Library.
