New world record for a work by Francisco Goya (1746 – 1828): the double portrait of Donna María Vicenta Barruso Valdés and her mother Dona Leonora Antonia Valdés de Barruso at Christie’s auction in New York fetched $16,420,000 .
This figure broke the previous record of the Spanish painter which dated back to 1992 when «Corrida, Suerte de Varas» (1824) was sold at Sotheby’s for 7,250,000 dollars. The sale took place during the session dedicated to the «Old Masters» which totaled 62,776,6660 dollars and set seven new records: in addition to Goya, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Marinus van Reymerswale, Gerard de Lairesse, Thomas Daniell, Giuseppe Bartolomeo Chiari and Jean Valette-Falgores known as Penot.
The two portraits were painted in 1805, when Goya was at the height of his artistic ability and at a time when he produced some of his most celebrated works. There are only a handful of pairs of portraits by the Spanish master remaining in private hands (mostly outside Spain) and this is probably the only one to depict two women. Both canvases arrived at the auction in excellent condition. They mark a crucial moment in the artist’s career: since his appointment as first court painter to King Charles IV (1748-1819) in April 1789, Goya had worked almost exclusively on commissions from the same court and the Spanish nobility. However, during the first decade of the 19th century he increasingly moved away from the court to embrace a more diverse group of patrons: this double portrait is among the first by the artist to depict bourgeois women.
From the choice of the artist and the way in which the two women have been depicted, it seems clear that the Barrusos wanted to be equated with the aristocracy. The clothes follow contemporary fashion and have been depicted with attributes of well-to-do ladies: the dog and the richly decorated fan. The mother and daughter are portrayed in the tradition of portraits of the nobility. The little dog on María Vicenta’s lap also wears a large collar embellished with large golden studs and belongs to a breed that was very popular among the upper echelons of Spanish society at that time. Very similar dogs appear in several other Goya portraits, perhaps the most famous being the 1795 Portrait of the Duchess de Alba (Collection de Alba, Madrid). Like the girl’s dress, the animal can also be seen as a statement of her status. The presence of the four-legged symbol of marital fidelity and the double mother-daughter portrait (unusual for the time) could suggest that the portrait was intended to promote the girl as a suitable bride for potential suitors. Even more surprising is the fact that María Vicenta is placed to the left (and therefore to the right of her mother), traditionally the position assumed by the most important figure of a couple who is portrayed en pendant.