María Antonia Gonzaga, marchesa vedova di Villafranca

By 1795 Goya was the most fashionable portraitist in Spain, and this sitter came from its very top. Maria Antonia Gonzaga had been a widow for more than 20 years by the time she posed, the dowager Marchioness of Villafranca and mother of the Duke of Alba. She was known as a woman of firm character who ran the family's vast estates herself, and Goya gives her exactly that air: upright in a gilded chair, dressed in black, her face sharp and thoughtful beneath a fine transparent veil. He handles the gauzy fabric with the soft, glowing light he had learned from studying Titian in the royal collection. It is the calm, worldly face of someone used to managing money, land and a great name.