I suppose I will be accused of cynically employing cheap tactics in order to get people to read my blog but there is a connection between the two Goya paintings I am featuring in this blog with the dubious habits of a young school boy. It was not just any pen. It was a pen which had a picture of a beautiful and fully clothed young woman. Today I am looking at, not one painting by Francisco Goya, but two, albeit as you will realise, they are almost the same except for one major exception. His two paintings are entitled La maja vestida The Clothed Maja and La maja desnuda The Nude Maja were painted around and and the only difference between the two is that in one the woman is fully clothed whilst in the other she is naked. The question has never really been answered but the names of two ladies are often bandied about by historians as being this sultry temptress.
Goya - The Nude Maja, la maja vestida April 6, | Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
These were unusual pieces for Goya which presented a woman lying on a bed, and, in the case of Maja Desnuda , a naked woman lying on a bed. Especially scandalizing to the Inquisitors was the naked Maja's visible pubic hair. Anther piece which may have been censored and angered the royal court was Los Caprichos , The Caprices , which was a satirical, unflattering portrait of the family of Charles IV. Godoy was hated in Spain for both his decadence and his part in Spain's collapse during the Napoleonic wars, which led to the abolition of the Inquisition by the French monarch, Joseph Bonaparte.
The Nude Maja was the first in a two painting series, the second of which was The Clothed Maja, respectively. It is said to be the first painting in which female pubic hair is visible, making it totally profane at the time. Many art historians agree that the model was a compilation of many female figures. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows, and was probably commissioned by Manuel de Godoy, to hang in his private collection in a separate cabinet reserved for nude paintings. Goya created a pendant of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, known today as La maja vestida The Clothed Maja ; also in the Prado, it is usually hung next to La maja desnuda.
The two pictures are usually hung next to one another. No one has ever discovered the model's identity, or why the paintings were created. Both of the paintings are recorded as first belonging to the collection of Prime Minister Manuel de Godoy, Duke of Alcudia.