Portrait of Maria Teresa de Vallabriga

In the summer of 1783 Goya was still a court hopeful, not yet the famous man he would become, when he was invited to stay with the household of the Infante Don Luis de Borbon at Arenas de San Pedro, in the hills west of Madrid. Don Luis was the king's younger brother, and he had given up a cardinal's rank to marry Maria Teresa de Vallabriga, an Aragonese noblewoman far below him in station. The match cost the couple their place at court and pushed them into a comfortable kind of exile in the country. This is her, painted quickly during that visit, her head turned in profile. Goya went home from those weeks with a set of portraits and a set of powerful friends who would soon open the palace doors to him.