Portrait of Antonia Zárate

The sitter was a leading actress, mother of the playwright Gil y Z�rate and one of several members of the theatrical world portrayed by Goya. She was born in 1775 and was 30 years old at the time when this portrait was probably painted. She died in 1811. Another bust portrait has been dated earlier by some critics and later by others. But the pose and details of her face and coiffure are so similar only the dress and fancy headdress are different that the two portraits cannot be very different in date.

The liveliness of the close-up view of the bust portrait suggests that this may be Goya’s first likeness of his beautiful sitter, later transformed into a grand composition. The problem of dating two versions of the same subject is not uncommon in Goya’s oeuvre. The yellow settee appears in other portraits by Goya (for example the portrait of P�rez Estala in the Kunsthalle, Hamburg) and was probably a studio property. Nowhere, however, does it provide a more effective setting than here, as a background to the lovely dark-haired actress.