The Marquesa de Pontejos

The Marquesa de Pontejos stands full-length in a rose-tinted gown, a white mantilla draped over her dark hair and a crimson carnation at her bosom, against the cool greens of a Spanish garden. Painted around 1786, in the brilliant early years of Francisco de Goya’s career as court painter to Charles III, the portrait fuses the elegant stiffness of Spanish court portraiture with the natural grace of the English conversation piece, and the slender young marquesa looks at once formal and vulnerable. Goya’s handling of the translucent silk, the lace and the porcelain flowers anticipates the radiant society portraits of the 1790s, before the deafness and the wars darkened his vision. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.