MASP

In 1774, thanks to the relations that his brother in- law, painter Francisco Bayeu (1734-1795) enjoyed with the court of Madrid, Goya made drawings for tapestries with commonplace scenes. These works brought him recognition among the aristocracy of the capital and were the starting point for the artist’s fast-track career. He reached the highest academic posts, such as the directorship of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando and the position of chamber painter (1789) of King Carlos IV (1748- 1819). Due to his deafness, caused by a disease, Goya quit these positions in 1797. Despite being highly demanded by the local elite as a portraitist, in that period he began some of his most sarcastic and caricatural series, a reflection of the horrors of his time. In Portrait of the Countess of Casa Flores, the Mexican wife of Lt. Col. José Luis Flores Pereira, a castellan from Porto de Acapulco, is painted in a pink and white dress made with transparent brushstrokes that contrast with her black hairdo. The brushwork is of the same sort as used in Ferdinand VII’s sleeve; another feature both portraits share in common is their focus on the character’s psychological character – with a natural, nonidealized beauty.

— MASP Curatorial Team, 2017

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The Portrait of the Countess of Casa Flores is not the marchioness, but the wife of the count of Casa Flores, Spanish ambassador. Born into a Spanish-Mexican aristocratic family in Mexico City, Doña María Rafaela Gutierres de Terán y Gonzales Vertiz was the daughter of Don Gabriel Gutierrez de Terán Cossio y Fernandez de Theran, mayor of Mexico City in 1760, and of Doña María Josefa Gonzales Vertis. In 1789, in the chapel of the Royal Palace in Mexico City, she married Don José Luis Florez Pereira, lieutenant-colonel of the Regiment of the Dragons of Spain and Lord of the Port of Acapulco, Chamber Gentleman and Spanish ambassador to Austria-Hungary, Russia and Portugal. The attribution of this work to Goya is a matter of dispute. Authors such as Mayer, von Loga, and Gudiol clearly endorse the master’s authorship. But in an article published in 1947, as well as in a letter to P. M. Bardi (1954), Martin Soria attributes the work to Agustín Esteve and sets the dating to 1795-1797, an attribution that was subsequently accepted by Lafuente Ferrari (1947), Young (1973), and Otto Benesch (oral communication). Finally, De Angelis hypothetically reinforces the attribution to Goya, a position maintained in this catalogue, in light of the author’s admirable psychological depiction of the sitter and the subtle harmony displayed by the light dress in the Directory fashion, among whites and faded pinks, painted with sparse brush strokes and extremely refined glazing, in contrast with the black of the lavish hair.

— Unknown authorship, 1998

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