Condesa de Altamira and Her Daughter, María Agustina

Goya painted the Countess of Altamira with her small daughter Maria Agustina in 1787. He was not yet the court painter everyone remembers, and this commission mattered: the Altamiras were one of the most powerful families in Spain, and their patronage pushed him up the ladder. Within a couple of years he was named painter to King Charles the Fourth. The countess sits stiffly upright in a shimmering embroidered gown that Goya clearly relished painting, while the child on her lap looks out with the same distant, faintly melancholy air. It is one of four portraits he made of this family. Another is the famous picture of their little boy in red with his pet magpie and cats, which hangs a few rooms away in the same museum.