ラ・ティラーナ

The woman in the white dress is Maria del Rosario Fernandez, one of the most famous actresses on the Madrid stage in the 1790s. Everyone knew her as La Tirana, borrowing the nickname from her husband, an actor who specialised in playing tyrants and was called el Tirano. Goya painted her twice, and this is the second portrait, from 1794. She stands in a shimmering white gown, flowers in her dark hair, holding a folded paper. Goya turned that paper into his signature, writing on it her name and his own and the year. He was in his late forties, already the leading portraitist in Spain and newly deaf after the illness that nearly killed him in 1793. The painting stayed in private hands, and for a long time hung in a collection on Mallorca.