Retrato de Maria Josefa da Espanha

This head was a working step toward something bigger. In the spring of 1800, newly named First Court Painter, Goya set up at the royal palace of Aranjuez and made quick oil studies of each member of the royal family, ten in all, to assemble into his great group portrait The Family of Charles IV. This is one of them: Maria Josefa, the king's unmarried sister, then in her mid 50s. Goya records her exactly as he found her, the sunken cheeks, the wary eye, and on her temple a small black patch, a fake beauty spot that had been fashionable in her youth and was by 1800 well out of date. She would die the following year. In the finished family painting she stands crowded into the shadows behind the queen.