Portrait of the Marquise de Lazán

Goya painted this full-length portrait in 1804, four years before Spain erupted against Napoleon. The sitter is Maria Gabriela de Palafox, the young Marquise of Lazan, shown standing beside a chaise in a high-waisted white gown of the Empire fashion then arriving from France. Goya gives her a confident, slightly theatrical turn, one arm resting on the seat back, the light catching her face and the sheen of the dress against a shadowed room. Her family would soon be swept into history. Her brother Jose de Palafox led the desperate defence of Zaragoza during the siege of 1808. Here, though, that is all still ahead, and she is simply a fashionable woman of the Madrid aristocracy.