Mujer dormida

Goya likely painted this around 1792 or 1793, and if so it comes from a hinge point in his life. Down in Cadiz, staying with his friend the merchant Sebastian Martinez, he fell gravely ill and came out of it permanently deaf, an isolation that would darken all his later work. Some scholars think this quiet canvas was one of three overdoor pictures made for Martinez's house in exactly those months. A woman lies asleep on her side, her head resting on one hand, in a plain pale dress the painter kept simple so that nothing pulls the eye from her face and shoulders. It is an easel-sized piece, the intimate kind of work that hung in a private Spanish home rather than a church or a palace.