The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was extracted from a book of 30 Goya postcards that was published by Magna Books.
The Dressed Maja and the Undressed Maja
Goya's other version of this painting (see tag 44GTN45) shows the Maja naked in the same full-frontal pose.
La Maja Desnuda has been described as "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art" without being legitimised by an allegorical or mythological theme.
The model’s pubic hair is visible—considered obscene at the time—and the lower-class status of the Maja, along with her blatant pose, with breasts and arms facing outward, suggests that the subject is more sexually accessible than the traditional goddesses of Western art.
The Naked Maja would have seemed daring and pornographic displayed alongside works such as Diego Velázquez’s The Toilet of Venus (also known as The Rokeby Venus, 1647–51).
The identity of the Maja is uncertain. The most popularly cited models are the Duchess of Alba (see tag 74GTD75), with whom Goya was thought to have had an affair, and Pepita Tudó, mistress of Manuel de Godoy.
Neither theory has been verified, and it remains as likely that the paintings represent an idealized composite.
Goya paid for his taboo-breaking act in 1815, when the Inquisition interrogated him about this painting; he was subsequently stripped of his role as court painter.
Manuel de Godoy
The paintings were never publicly exhibited during Goya's lifetime, and were owned by Manuel de Godoy, who kept a number of paintings of the female nude in a private cabinet dedicated to this theme. It is thought that he may have commissioned the two Maja paintings.
Godoy, who was born in 1767, was the First Secretary of State for Spain from 1792 to 1797 and then from 1801 to 1808. This made him one of the central Spanish political figures during the rise of Napoleon and his invasion of Spain.
Godoy's unmatched power ended in 1808 with the Tumult of Aranjuez, which forced him into a long exile. In 1808 all of Godoy's property was seized by Ferdinand VII, and in 1813 the Inquisition confiscated both works as 'obscene', returning them in 1836 to the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.
Godoy died in 1851 in Paris, where he was laid to rest in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered to be the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th. and early 19th. centuries.
His paintings, drawings, and engravings reflected contemporary historical upheavals, and influenced important 19th.- and 20th.-century painters.
Goya is often referred to as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the Moderns.
Goya was born to a middle-class family on the 30th. March 1746 in Fuendetodos in Aragon. He studied painting from the age of 14 under José Luzán y Martinez, and moved to Madrid to study with Anton Raphael Mengs.
He married Josefa Bayeu in 1773. Goya became a court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786, and this early portion of his career is marked by portraits of Spanish aristocracy and royalty, and Rococo-style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.
Although Goya's letters and writings survive, little is known about his thoughts. He had a severe and undiagnosed illness in 1793 that left him deaf, after which his work became progressively darker and more pessimistic.
His later easel and mural paintings, prints and drawings appear to reflect a bleak outlook on personal, social and political levels, and contrast with his social climbing.
He was appointed Director of the Royal Academy in 1795, the year Manuel Godoy made an unfavorable treaty with France.
In 1799, Goya became Primer Pintor de Cámara, the highest rank for a Spanish court painter.
In the late 1790's he completed his La Maja Desnuda, a remarkably daring nude for the time, and clearly indebted to Diego Velázquez. In 1800–01, he painted Charles IV of Spain and his family, also influenced by Velázquez.
In 1807, Napoleon led the French army into the Peninsular War against Spain. Goya remained in Madrid during the war, which seems to have affected him deeply. Although he did not speak his thoughts in public, they can be inferred from his Disasters of War series of prints (although published 35 years after his death) and his 1814 paintings The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808.
Other works from his mid-period include the Caprichos and Los Disparates etching series, and a wide variety of paintings concerned with insanity, mental asylums, witches, fantastical creatures and religious and political corruption, all of which suggest that he feared for both his country's fate and his own mental and physical health.
His late period culminates with the Black Paintings of 1819–1823, applied to the plaster walls of his house the Quinta del Sordo (House of the Deaf Man) where, disillusioned by political and social developments in Spain, he lived in near isolation.
Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his much younger maid and companion, Leocadia Weiss, who may have been his lover.
There he completed his La Tauromaquia series and a number of other works. Following a stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side, Goya died on the 16th. April 1828 aged 82.
