The Countess of Chinchón (La condesa de Chinchón)

María Teresa de Bourbon y Vallabriga (1780-1820) was the daughter of the Infante Don Luis de Bourbon, brother of Charles III, and of Doña María Teresa de Vallabriga y Rozas. The first five years of her life were spent in Arenas de San Pedro (Ávila), where Goya painted a portrait of her in a garden. When her father died in 1785 she was sent, along with her sister María Luisa de Borbón y Vallabriga, to the convent of San Clemente in Toledo, which she finally left in 1797 to marry Manuel Godoy, a minister during the reign of Charles IV. From their marriage was born a daughter, the Infanta Carlota, raised by Queen María Luisa. After the rebellion of Aranjuez, in which Godoy was imprisoned, María Teresa fled to Toledo with her brother and, in 1824, when he died, she went into exile in Paris, where she died four years later following a prolonged period of illness.

The countess was here depicted at the age of twenty-one, pregnant with her daughter, the Infanta Carlota. She is in front of a dark background, seated in a golden period armchair and wearing a dress of white gauze decorated with small flowers and a low neckline. The cloth features some detailed folds and touches of grey, whilst the sitter's hair displays abundant blonde curls, tied back and decorated with ears of wheat (a symbol of fertility) and green feathers, with a ribbon tied under her chin. Her hands, clasped together over her belly, are both adorned with a ring, on one of which we can make out an image of her husband. The painter has focused all of his attention on the timid, somewhat daydreaming character of the countess. The warm colour palette employed gives a heightened sense of delicacy and elegance to the figure. This is without a doubt a key piece in the artist's oeuvre.