La Comtesse del Carpio, marquise de La Solana

The woman in black is María Rita Barrenechea, Marquesa de la Solana, a writer and noblewoman of the Madrid court, and Goya painted her in the 1790s knowing she was dying. She was not yet 40 and gravely ill, and she would be dead within a couple of years. Goya does not soften it. Her face is thin and flushed with fever and her dark eyes are tired, yet she stands very straight, wrapped in black lace with a single pink bow at her breast and pink shoes just showing below. She holds a folded fan and looks past us, steady, the ground bare and grey behind her.