Art: The Sad-Eyed Countess

The reign of pudgy Charles IV, King of Spain from 1788 to 1808, was as squalid as it was tragic, but it did boast one supreme ornament. The Painter to the King was Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes, who left behind on canvas a royal family album that has dazzled the world ever since. Each year thousands of visitors to the Prado in Madrid have come to know Goya’s bumbling old King, his sharp-faced Queen, the sulky heir apparent, and a host of beribboned infantes and infantas, all portrayed with ruthless candor. But one member of the family is rarely seen: the frail Countess of Chinchon (see color), whose portrait hangs in the private collection of her descendant, the Duke of Sueca.

The countess was Charles IV’s cousin, and Goya painted her first when she was a happy little child without a care. At 18, she was forced to marry Don Manuel Godoy, a shrewd provincial nobody whose seductive charms eventually made him lover to the Queen, favorite to the King, Duke of Alcudia and later Sueca, Prince of the Peace, Prime Minister—and the most hated man in Spain. The King was so fond of Godoy that he wanted him to be part of the family, and Godoy himself languidly wrote of his marriage: “I obeyed in this, as in all the acts of my life, with loyalty and submission.” But what was merely a bore to the favorite was torture to his wife.

She knew of his affair with the bad-tempered Queen, for it was the talk of Europe. And there was also the rumor that Godoy had already been secretly married to another of his mistresses, Dona Josefa Tudo, known in the streets as Pepita, the flirtatious daughter of a penniless artillery officer. At public dinners Godoy scandalized even Madrid’s jaded courtiers by forcing his wife to sit next to his mistress.

When the countess posed for Goya the second time, she was only 21, and the artist never treated a subject with more tenderness. As usual, he did not care about background—the person was his concern—and he painted her sitting in darkness, yet glowing with light, her pale hands gracefully folded in a shy attempt to conceal her first pregnancy. But what makes the picture unforgettable is the expression on the face—the exquisitely sad look of one whose life has been stolen and who knows that no one will give it back.

It was Napoleon who inadvertently ended her ordeal. Toppled from power after a series of disastrous defeats, nearly lynched by a mob, Godoy fled into exile, never to return. The countess lived on in Spain with at least one consoling memory.

It was of the night that the mobs came to loot her husband’s house. When they saw her, they paused long enough to lead her gently out of harm’s way, remembering that she at least was innocent as well as royal, though married to the man they called El Charicero—the Sausage-Maker.