Francisco de Goya
Two of Goya's most famous paintings were owned by a member of the royal court, Manuel de Godoy. These two paintings are called The Nude Maja (La maja desnuda) and The Clothed Maja (La maja vestida). The nude painting was thought of as very shocking. In 1813, the Inquisition said that both paintings were pornography and took them away. They were returned to Goya in 1836. Nobody knows who the woman was that posed for Goya. One idea is that she was the Duchess of Alba. She may have been Godoy's mistress. Perhaps Goya painted the figure from his imagination. There is only one earlier nude painting by a Spanish artist, Velazquez's "Venus and Cupid", (see National Gallery, London). When this painting was done, other nude figures, painted in Italy, Germany and other countries, always showed the woman as a goddess from mythology or had some other allegorical meaning (was a symbol of some sort). This painting is unusual because the nude figure is not meant to be a Goddess and does not seem to have any symbolic meaning. It is the very first life-sized female nude in Western Painting that is just about the beauty of the female body.