The Nude Maja
Francisco de Goya (1746 to 1828) · 1795 to 1800
A young woman lies naked on a green velvet couch with her hands behind her head and looks at us with a small, direct smile. Her hair is loose, her cheeks flushed, and the sheets and pillows beneath her are painted in a blaze of white and lace. There is no story, no goddess, no mythological excuse. She is a maja, one of the fashionable young women of Madrid's lower classes whose style the aristocracy imitated, and she is entirely at ease. Beside her hangs its companion, the Clothed Maja, in which the same woman lies in the same pose in a white dress with a yellow jacket, and the pair has been a scandal and a puzzle ever since.
Goya painted the nude first, for the private collection of Manuel Godoy, the queen's favourite and the most powerful man in Spain, who kept it in a cabinet of nudes along with Velázquez's Venus. The clothed version was made a few years later, and legend says it hung in front of the nude and could be swung aside. Look at the body, which is painted with almost no shadow, and at the pubic hair, which was unheard of in European painting and is one reason the picture caused such trouble. The face, small and doll-like, seems almost pasted on to the body, and some think it was repainted to protect a sitter's identity.
Who she was is unknown. The Duchess of Alba, Goya's friend and patron, was the favourite guess for a century, and Godoy's mistress Pepita Tudó is a better one. After Godoy fell in 1808 the paintings were seized, and in 1815 the Inquisition summoned Goya to explain them; his answer is lost. They passed to the Academy and came to the Prado in 1901, where they have hung together ever since.
Did You Know? In 1930 the Spanish postal service issued stamps of the Nude Maja, and the United States Post Office refused to deliver letters that carried them.
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