La dama con il ventaglio

By 1805 Goya was first court painter in Madrid, and Spain was three years from the French invasion that would give him his darkest work. None of that is here. This is a private portrait of a young Madrid woman, painted for her own circle rather than the palace. Who she was is no longer certain. She has sometimes been called the singer Lorenza Correa, though the identification is far from settled. Goya sets her almost square to us, a fan closed in her right hand, meeting the viewer's eye without ceremony, and keeps the background bare so nothing competes with the face. It is one of only a handful of his paintings ever to reach the Louvre, which acquired it in the 19th century.