Nude Maja
The Nude Maja (Maja means beautiful lady in Spanish) is the only nude icon created by Francisco De Goya, which is collected in Prado Museum of Madrid, Spain. It's said there was a funny story about this painting. It's said, the icon of this portrait painting, was the beautiful Spanish Duchess of Alba. Goya had adored the beauty of the Duchess for a long time, and finally he got a chance (Goya was commissioned by the Duke of Alba to paint for the Duchess) to see the real personage. Goya was absolutely absorbed in the beauty of the Duchess and requested to do a naked painting for her. Therefore, we saw a young slim lady with crinkly black hair, naked lying comfortable on a sofa, hands crossed above the head.
The Clothed Maja
After that, Goya didn't show the complete painting to the Duke till got the message that the Duke knew he had seen the Duchess in naked and would like to kill him. When the day the Duke came, he showed the other painting, The Clothed Maja (the same icon but dressed cloth) which saved his life. It doesn't matter whether the story is real or not, but we really know that these two pieces of art works, are really had a great impact to this age of Spain which was a really traditional strict society under the religion control (No one painted nude portrait before). Goya was a great artist not only he was productive in many identified painting techniques, but also he dared to reveal and mock the society through his pen. For the Nude and cloth Maja, actually in my points, Goya was smart to carter different tastes under the same theme, which is one reason why he was so welcome popular. The film Volaverunt (1999) was created from this painting.
