The Marchioness of Villafranca Painting her Husband

By 1804 Goya was Spain's leading court painter, and here he did something a little unusual. He painted a portrait of someone else in the act of painting. Maria Tomasa de Palafox, Marchioness of Villafranca, sits in a white empire gown, brush in hand, working at a portrait of her husband. She was no amateur in the dismissive sense. She had been admitted to the Royal Academy of San Fernando as an academician of merit. Goya sets up a quiet game of looks. The husband, on the canvas she is painting, turns his head to gaze back at the wife who is making him. Contemporaries wrote of how devoted the couple were, and the picture seems built around exactly that returned glance.