Goya was a leading Spanish painter and engraver who worked as a court painter for King Carlos III, King Carlos IV and King Ferdinand VII.

The woman in the painting is Donça Isabel de Porcel (about 1780-1842), the wife of Don Antonio de Porcel, the head of state of the American colonies.

▲ Francisco de Goya, "Doña Isabel de Porcel " before 1805, Oil on canvas, 82 x 54.6 cm, The National Gallery, London, Bought, 1896, NG 1473, Photo by SayArt Sims green.

Doña Porcel is dressed like a maja, a woman typically from the lower classes, whose traditional dress became fashionable in Spanish court in the late eighteenth and early ninteenth centuries. She wears an elaborate black lace shawl and headdress, known as a mantilla. A comb decorated with a large rosette of black ribbons secures the mantilla away from her face. This portrait, as one of Goya's masterpieces, was chosen as the cover of the National Gallery's catalogue, 100 Great paintings.

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