La Tirana

By 1799 Goya was first court painter to the Spanish crown, and half of fashionable Madrid wanted their likeness from his brush. The woman here is María del Rosario Fernández, the most celebrated stage actress in Spain, known to everyone by her nickname La Tirana — the tyrant's wife — after a role her husband played. Goya had already painted her once, years earlier, when she was younger. This is the second time, and she is in her forties now, dressed in white gauze with a red and gold stole, standing with the ease of someone used to an audience. The picture stayed in her family. In 1816 her cousin gave it to the Academy of San Fernando in Madrid, where it still hangs.