Marie-Louise, reine d'Espagne, née Bourbon-Parme

When Charles III died in 1788, Goya painted the new king and queen for their coronation and made several replicas of each portrait. This likeness of Queen Maria Luisa of Parma is one of them, from around 1789. He had just been named a court painter, the post he had wanted for years. She stands before a green curtain in French-fashion grey, a crown and ermine mantle laid on the table beside her, wearing the Austrian Order of the Starry Cross on her chest. Goya would later paint this same queen with a famously frank eye, in the royal family group of 1800, where nobody is flattered. This earlier portrait, made to mark a coronation, still gives her the gauze headdress and feathers gathered with a blue ribbon that the fashion of the moment asked for.