La maja nuda

Around 1800 this hung not in a gallery but in a locked private cabinet belonging to Manuel Godoy, the prime minister who effectively ran Spain for the king. Godoy kept a room of nude pictures for his own eyes, and a reclining woman looking straight out at the viewer, unbothered, was exactly the sort of thing that stayed behind that door. When his power collapsed in 1808 the painting was found, and years later Goya was called before what remained of the Spanish Inquisition to explain who commissioned it and why. The face has always been the puzzle. People wanted her to be a real duchess, but no name was ever proven, and Goya let the question sit. What survives is a body painted without mythology to excuse it, no Venus, no goddess, just a woman on green cushions meeting your gaze.