拉·富恩桑塔

Julio Romero de Torres painted this in the autumn of 1929, in the last full year of his life. He died the following spring in his native Cordoba. The model was Maria Teresa Lopez Gonzalez, born in Argentina and brought to Cordoba as a child, who had first sat for him at 14 and become the face most people picture when they think of his work. Here she leans on a copper cauldron, still and grave, wrapped in the dark-eyed Andalusian mood he made his own. Whatever critics thought of his sultry regional style, ordinary Spaniards carried this face in their pockets for 25 years: from 1953 the painting was printed on the back of the 100-peseta note.