La marchesa di Caballero

Goya painted the Marquesa de Caballero in 1807, the last calm year before Napoleon's armies crossed into Spain and Goya's world dissolved into the war he would later record in the Disasters. She was the wife of the king's justice minister, freshly raised to marquis, and she holds in her hands a small note on which that new title can be read. Goya flatters nothing. He gives her the latest Empire fashion, a blue-green silk gown under gold-threaded gauze, but paints the 33-year-old face plainly, tired and watchful. The portrait was made as a pair to one of her husband, now in Budapest. She did not enjoy the rank long. She died two years later, in 1809, as the fighting spread across the country.