This 1783 portrait of almost 3-year-old María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga, later Condesa de Chinchón (March 6 1779 - November 23,1828) by Francisco de Goya hangs in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.
"Although Goya is now best known for his innovative and incisive depictions of such themes as the excitement of the bullring and horrors of the Napoleonic wars, it was as a portraitist that he first gained fame among his countrymen. In 1783, Goya was called to Arenas de San Pedro by the Infante Don Luis, brother of Charles III, to paint a family portrait. He also painted individual portraits of family members such as this one.
Ingenuous but self-assured, the future countess wears the fashionable attire of a lady of the Spanish court as she poses at the edge of a terrace. She gazes out at the viewer with an innocence very much in contrast with her adult costume and mature stance. In the style of earlier "grand-manner" portraiture, Goya may have manipulated the setting to enhance the image of the diminutive sitter, perhaps adjusting the scale of the parapet to her size and placing the wall close to her.
This is one of four portraits by Goya of María Teresa, with whom he maintained a lifelong sympathetic relationship. One of the most tragic figures at the court of Charles IV, the countess was trapped in a humiliating marriage to the King's minister, Manuel Godoy, arranged by the Queen, Maria Luisa, for her own duplicitous purposes." -- National Gallery of Art
Wikipedia describes the portrait this way:
"Maria Teresa of Bourbon, Countess of Chinchon was the daughter of the Infante Louis Anthony of Bourbon, the younger brother of Charles III of Spain, exiled from the court, for concluding a morganatic marriage with Aragonese aristocrat María Teresa de Vallabriga. After the death of her father sent her to a convent, where she lived in the years 1785-1797. In 1797, Queen Marie Louise arranged her marriage with his favorite Manuel Godoy, in order to raise his aristocratic status. The relationship with Godoy allowed her family to recover numerous privileges, lost by marrying the father of the aristocracy without royal origin, such as the use of name and coat of arms of the Bourbons. The Countess became a full member of the royal family and the most important lady in the country after the Queen Mary Louise. After the fall of Godoy in 1808, she was in Spain until the end of the Peninsular War. After the return of Ferdinand VII of Spain and the restoration of absolute monarchy moved to France...
Goya presented the three-year aristocrat in a rich French outfit on a background of a mountain landscape. The artist made a few children's portraits always referring to their models with respect and affection, also visible in the image. Goya's portraits of children are usually at a toy or favorite pet, in the case of a small Countess is a white dog." -- Wikipedia
The inscription reads:
LA S.D. MARIA TERESA
HIXA DEL SER. INFANTE
D. LUIS
DE EDAD DE DOS ANOS Y NUEVE MESES
(The S[enorita] D[oña] Teresa, daughter of the Most Serene Infante, Don Luis, at the age of two years and nine months)The large red B and the numbers 15.5. are “inventory marks from the collection at Boadilla del Monte, probably by nineteenth-century hands”
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