A radiant female figure beset by dark spirits; page 45 from the 'Images of Spain' album (F)

Art Historical Context

In the turbulent years around 1812–20, amid Spain's Napoleonic upheavals, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes created this haunting drawing as page 45 in his private *Images of Spain* album (F). Titled *A Radiant Female Figure Beset by Dark Spirits*, it exemplifies Goya's late Romantic style, marked by psychological intensity and supernatural dread. No longer the court painter of vibrant portraits, Goya turned inward, filling albums with dreamlike visions that captured human vulnerability and the era's moral darkness. Rendered in brush and point-of-brush with brown and gray washes over subtle chalk touches on laid paper (8 1/16 × 5 9/16 in.), the work masterfully contrasts a luminous female figure—evoking purity or resilience—with encroaching shadowy spirits. This innovative mixed-media technique on modest paper allowed Goya's fluid washes to build dramatic chiaroscuro, heightening emotional tension without color's distraction. Such private sketches influenced his later *Black Paintings*, revealing his preoccupation with fear, the occult, and women's trials in a chaotic world. Held in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department (Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935), this piece invites visitors to ponder Goya's genius for distilling Spain's collective nightmares into intimate, unforgettable forms.

About the Artist

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) · 1746–1828

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker considered the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Rising from modest provincial origins to become First Court Painter to Charles IV, Goya's career spanned the Enlightenment's optimism and the brutal Napoleonic invasion that shattered it. A mysterious illness in 1793 left him permanently deaf and ...