Josefa Bayeu

For generations this quiet portrait was known as the only painted likeness of Goya's wife, Josefa Bayeu. They were married nearly 40 years, and she bore him many children, most of whom died young. But the Prado today doubts the old name. Josefa would have been well past 50 when it was painted, while the woman here is barely 30. The likelier sitter, curators now think, is Leocadia Zorrilla, the much younger relative who kept house for Goya and became his companion in his widowed old age. Either way, he gives her almost nothing to pose with: a plain dark background, a soft grey dress, one hand resting quietly in her lap.