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Portrait of Josefa Bayeu
Disputed dates of creation:
1814 - Prado Museum
1790 - August Mayer
Oil on canvas
81 cm by 56 cm
Prado Museum, Madrid

In some quarters there is a dispute about whether this painting is actually of Goya's wife Josefa, or some other unidentified sitter. Some modern experts are suggesting the sitter for this portrait might be Leocadia Zorilla de Weiss. Evidense about the clothing style and the lighting in the painting dates the image to 1815, a time when Goya's wife Josefa would have been much older than the apparent youthfullness shown here. However, the hair styling suggests the timing is from the 1790s during the French Restoration (see page 207 from the book Goya:Images of Women, section written by Aileen Ribeiro, published by the National Gallery of Art, 2002).

Of course, Goya's skills were such that he could have easily taken an unfinished painting from an earlier period and finished it in his newer style (or entirely redid it) according to some new idea about what he wanted in the picture. As Josefa would have been a much older womanin 1815 than what is presented in this image (the woman is perhaps in her 30s) it is within the scope of Goya's abilities to paint a younger version of his wife should he have chosen to do so. This is hardly unusual for artists to do, as many have painted posthumous portraits of various subjects. However, these possible motivations are inventions on my part, as are the ideas of some experts that the image is of Leocadia Weiss. There si simply no evidense except the traditional designation that it is Josefa Bayeu. – Erik Weems

To view Goya's charcoal drawing of his wife go here.