Portrait of Joaquina Candado Ricarte

Who she was is still argued over. The old story, repeated since the 19th century, is that Joaquina Candado kept house for Goya and was close to him, though other scholars have read her as one of his majas or simply an unnamed lady. What is documented is plainer and stranger. The woman herself gave this canvas to the Royal Academy of San Carlos in Valencia in 1819, some 17 years after Goya painted her with a small dog at her side. By then Goya was in his seventies, long deaf, his court career fading. She had kept the portrait for most of her life before handing it to the academy, where it has stayed.