Ritratto di Josefa de Castilla Portugal y van Asbrock de Garcini

Goya made this in 1804 as one half of a pair, the other being her husband, the military engineer Ignacio Garcini. Josefa Castilla Portugal appears to be pregnant here, which likely explains the loose hair and the informal white dress, unusual for a formal portrait of the time. Her mother was of Flemish descent, and the solid, warm-toned handling recalls the Rubens and Rembrandt canvases Goya knew from the royal collections in Madrid. The couple's descendants kept both paintings until 1910, when they were sold to a New York collector, and the pair reached the Metropolitan together in 1955. Goya painted them in the last quiet years before Napoleon's invasion turned Spain into the war he would later record in his darkest prints.