Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel

The Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel is an oil painting by the Spanish painter Francisco de Goya. It was built 1804-1805 and is Isabel Lobo Velasco de Porcel, the wife of the Spanish politician Antonio de Porcel, Represents the plant is located since 1896 in the possession of the National Gallery in London and is part of the permanent public art exhibition.

Background

Isabel Lobo Velasco de Porcel was born in 1780 and came from the Andalusian town of Ronda. Her father, Joaquín Lobo y Velasco was official in the local city government and her mother, María Mercedes Velasco y Mendieta, came from Seville and moved to her husband's death with her six children to Madrid. There Doña Isabel married in 1802 the 46 -year-old, widowed politician Antonio de Porcel, where she gave birth to a total of four children 1802-1807. She died in 1842, ten years after her husband's death in 1832.

Antonio de Porcel was born in 1755 and came from the Andalusian province of Granada. He was a member of the influential Kastilienrates and the India Council and was also the Minister responsible for the whole of the Spanish possessions in North and South America and has held life more high political office. He was a friend of the enlightened statesmen Manuel de Godoy and Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, who brought him into contact with Goya, who lived in the vicinity of the property of the couple in Madrid and had previously made ​​even portraits of the two leaders.

Formation

As an expression of gratitude for which he painted of Porcels the esteem and hospitality Goya in the result of both a portrait of Doña Isabel (1804-1805) and her husband (1806 ). The latter showed him in hunting clothes, holding a rifle and a hunting dog at his side. It was destroyed in 1956 by a fire at the place at the Jockey Club in Buenos Aires. A black and white photograph of the painting was preserved.

Shortly after the completion of the portrait of Doña Isabel Goya left it in 1805 exhibit, together with the portrait of the Marquesa de Villafranca in the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which can be interpreted as an expression of his own satisfaction with the two works, as he by the public review and critical evaluation exposed by other artists and academics. The exhibition documents it was run as a portrait of the wife of Don Antonio de Porcel, so that identification of Doña Isabel only made ​​possible in recent years as the wife of Don Antonio.

Image construction

The reaching to the waist portrait depicts a young woman who is wrapped in a traditional Andalusian dress. About a white blouse she is wearing a pink colored satin gown, on the turn, a black lace mantilla is thrown that framed her face and partially covered her upper body. The dark clothes and the only imperceptibly brighter image and background are light, almost pale skin of the woman acting in contrast.

Your expressive face is framed by dark-blonde, half-long and loosely parted hair, the slightly ruffled lace sideways fall on their face and thereby release the ears. The lively expression is enhanced by their large, black, and slightly to the side and rolled eyes by her shapely red lips.

Your body is slightly turned to the left, whereas the head to the right, which in turn contributes to the balance of representation. Rest your hands on your lap or are based on the hips and thus round the lower part of the half-length figure from. The slight foreshortening gives the image depth and also makes it seem realistic without a designed background and decorative accessories.

Interpretation

Goya made ​​Doña Isabel, as well as many other of the portrayed women from him, in the guise of a maja from, so a woman of the lower classes, despite their humble origins consciously fashionable and elegant dressed, a fashion that to the ladies of upmarket layers that time frequently tried to imitate.

The presentation of Doña Isabel is often regarded as the attractive, vibrant young woman viewed, which is in the prime of her beauty and presents itself in a self -confident and proud bearing. Emphasis is particularly often the sensual quality of the portrait " plump body -like", which is still further emphasized about by the full red lips, and big round eyes.

Investigations

The painting was created in 1980 subjected behalf of the National Gallery of intensive cleaning to restore the original color intensity and brightness. In the course of treatment also extensive analyzes were performed, which provided some amazing results.

Identification of the person depicted

The name of the person portrayed is often wrongly given as Isabel Cobos de Porcel, as this is the modern label that has been affixed end of the 19th century on the rear, reinforcing the screen while doubling the canvas.

When removing the rear screen in 1980, however, showed that on the original canvas still have an older handwritten inscription hid: La Exma. Sra. Dna. Lobo de Porcel (written: La Señora Doña Excelentísima Lobo de Porcel, Germany Her Excellency Señora Doña Lobo de Porcel ) and subsequently Goya's signature Pintado por Goya (Eng. painted by Goya ). The family name Cobos modern inscription could be revealed as false transmission of actually correct Lobo.

X-ray

An X-ray examination of the painting rendered the finding that it was painted over another ( almost) perfected Portrait of a man in uniform, but which certainly can not be attributed to Goya. The old screen was not re- primed before re- use, which is why today easily shines through, among others, the man's right eye through the chin of Doña Isabel.

The sitter is slightly deeper placed on the canvas - the chin of Doña Isabel runs across his eyes - and looking towards the viewer, with slightly turned to the left head and body. He is wearing a uniform, which is found in this way in any other of Goya's paintings. The tunic is decorated with a variety of narrow stripes that form a regular rectangular pattern. Furthermore recognizable are a wide lapel and the band of an order on the right side of the chest.

The fact that the easily recognizable face of the man has typical characteristics of Goya's Porträtierstil, for example in comparison to his portrait of the Army doctor Don José Queraltó, makes a Goya's authorship, although probable, but not entirely sure. Nor will the sitter as well as its dramatically designed uniform in other images from Goya's work again. More likely, as the artist himself has discarded the old portrait, seems, therefore, that the sitter may have died before 1805 or for any other reason Goya image could not lose weight.

Using the X-rays and subsequent amendments to the portrait of Doña Isabel could be identified. Thus was originally painted higher on the left image side of the rock, which was later corrected, and it should be the elbows, are also cut as shown on the right-hand side of the screen edges, but this was abandoned in favor of a more balanced and more central representation of the people portrayed.

It remains unclear, first, why Goya has not turned the old canvas to hide the man in the dark areas of the new portraits of the head, and on the other hand, why he used at all for a commissioned work by an old canvas again. Sure seems that the reuse of the canvas must have influenced the design of the new portraits, since features such as the highly placed and turned to the side head and the frame-filling dominance of the dark robe are unusual for Goya's work.

Others

On 24 March 1958, the Spanish postal service in 1958 was the date of the stamp out a special edition with paintings by Goya, where a stamp with the design Doña Isabel de Porcel was included. This is only an excerpt, which was mapped spielgelverkehrt.