Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago by Goya in the Getty Center, June 2016

Title: Portrait of the Marquesa de Santiago

Artist/Maker: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco de Goya) (Spanish, 1746 - 1828)

Culture: Spanish

Date: 1804

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 209.6 × 126.4 cm (82 1/2 × 49 3/4 in.)

Signed: Signed and dated, lower right: "La Marquesa de / S.n Tiago Goya 1804"

Department: Paintings

Classification: Paintings

Object Type: Painting

Object Number: 83.PA.12

The Marquesa de Santiago stands full-length in front of a landscape of gently sloping hills. Well-born, very wealthy, and a commanding presence, she confronts the viewer directly. Her white lace mantilla extends to her knees, and she holds a closed fan in her left hand. Heavily applied make-up accentuates her features. Known for her dissolute lifestyle, the Marquesa died at the age of forty-three, three years after this portrait was made. An English visitor to Spain once described her as "very profligate and loose in her manners and conversations, and scarcely admitted into female society and said to boast of her nocturnal revels."

While contemporary portraitists sought to convey ideal beauty with a highly finished technique, Goya used a more expressionistic handling of the paint. Broad, quick brushstrokes describe her dark dress, and the application of thick impasto suggests the gold braid on the Marquesa's sleeve and lace of her mantilla. In the background, crude cottages and trees are merely indicated with wide, rapid sweeps of the brush.


Text from: www.getty.edu/art/collection/objects/706/francisco-jose-de-goya-y-lucientes-francisco-de-goya-portrait-of-the-marquesa-de-santiago-spanish-1804