Why Goya Clothed the Naked Woman?
The mystery behind ‘The Nude Maja’ and ‘The Clothed Maja’
Francisco Goya is one of the rare artists in history who composed a wide range of paintings in his body of work — from exuberant, dramatic, jolly artworks to grotesque and disturbing paintings towards the end of his life.
Famous for the eerily disturbing ‘Saturn devouring his son’, Goya also created La maja desnuda (English: The Nude Maja) around 1800. It portrays a nude woman reclining on a bed with pillows. She exhibits an unapologetic confrontational gaze exactly like Olympia by Édouard Manet. As soon as Goya completed this painting, he also painted the pendant of the same woman identically posed but ‘clothed’ called La maja vestida (English: The Clothed Maja).
Today, The Nude Maja and The Clothed Maja hang together side by side in the Prado museum.
But what could have prompted Goya to paint the clothed version of the naked maja? This article would delve into the possible speculations for Goya’s censorship act.
