Word: countess
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...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...
...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...
...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...
...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...
Winifred Wells, Lady Falmouth, the Countess of Kildare, Frances Stuart, Lou ise de Keroualle, Hortense Mancini and Nell Gwynn. "God would not damn a man for a little irregular pleasure," Charles said happily to a friend. Dignity sometimes demanded that he send John Wilmot, the licentious second Earl of Rochester, to the Tower of London for writing obscene satires. But the King always...