Ritratto di doña Isabel de Porcel

Goya showed a portrait of Isabel de Porcel in Madrid in 1805, and for a long time this was simply counted among his finest, a dark-eyed woman in a black lace mantilla over a rose-pink bodice. Then in 1980 the National Gallery x-rayed it, and a second face looked back. Underneath Isabel is a man in a striped jacket and waistcoat, painted only a few years earlier and never scraped away or sealed off first. Goya, or whoever held the brush, simply turned the canvas over to her. That last point is now openly argued. The gallery itself has questioned whether the surface really is by Goya, noting brushwork less searching than his usual, and it remains an open case. The man beneath, at least, is not in doubt.