Ladies

A similar duality of psychological depth and surface affect reigned over portraiture of women in 17th century Spain, but it was aggravated by a social sensibility that obligated women to behave with modesty and made female portraits rare outside the heraldic context of royalty. In this moral setting the splendid attire that a true "lady" donned in public—to demonstrate both her elevated social rank and her skill at handling appearances with care—was always viewed with a degree of suspicion, as if social ostentation covered over coquettishness, seduction, deceit, or libertinage. Ambivalence between introspective reserve and decorative display became essential to Goya, who in the context of the Enlightenment, managed to shatter conventional stereotypes by combining them in defiant individualistic portraits of duchesses and other prominent women. In the twentieth century, even as the figure of the lady gave way to new social roles, the old, paradoxical understanding of femininity persisted in the works of Picasso and his avant-garde colleagues, who represented women as dual sources of pleasure and peril.

Top of Page

Above, left to right:
Francisco De Goya (1746–1828), The Duchess of Abrantes, 1816. Oil on canvas 92 x 70 cm. Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid

Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), Portrait of Marie-Thérese Walter with a Garland, 1937. Oil and pencil on canvas, 61 x 46 cm. Private collection