Леокадия

Around 1820, deaf, ageing and recovering from a serious illness, Goya covered the walls of his house outside Madrid, the Quinta del Sordo, with fourteen dark paintings he never meant for anyone else to see. This is one of them. A woman in black stands leaning on what looks like a low mound or a railing, a mourning veil around her, gazing out with a heavy, guarded expression. She is usually identified as Leocadia Weiss, the much younger woman who kept house for Goya and shared his last years. What she is leaning on is often read as a grave, and behind her the ground and sky are bruised and empty. These murals were painted straight onto plaster, and they should not really still exist. In the 1870s the house was sold, and a new owner had the whole series peeled off the walls and glued onto canvas so they could travel, a brutal process that stripped away a great deal of paint. They have hung in the Prado since 1889.