Portrait d'une dame à la mantille noire

In May 1824 Goya, 78 and deaf for 30 years, asked Ferdinand VII for leave to take the waters in France for his health. The king had just been restored to absolute power with the help of a French army, liberals were being hunted out of public life, and people Goya knew were going into exile. He crossed to Bordeaux, where a Spanish colony had formed, and stayed there. This portrait, which the National Gallery of Ireland bought in 1905, was painted around that time. Nobody knows who she is. The names put forward include Leocadia Weiss, who kept house for him and followed him to France, and Catalina Moreno. The black lace mantilla, the comb and the earring are set down at speed, almost in shorthand, while the face is worked up in greens, greys and white.