The Nude Maja
In Room 036 of the Prado Museum hangs one of the most dangerously seductive and “forbidden” paintings in art history. This is Francisco Goya’s The Nude Maja. You would absolutely never expect that in an era where the Spanish Inquisition could still burn people alive, Goya dared to paint the first life-sized female nude in Western art history that wasn’t disguised as a mythological goddess, unabashedly showing a regular, real woman.
If you compare this painting with earlier coy Venuses, the posture of this Maja (a term then used for lower-class, fashionable, and somewhat brash girls in Madrid) is sheer provocation. Though completely nude, with her arms casually resting behind her head, the deadliest element is her gaze. She doesn’t shyly turn her head away; instead, she stares straight out at the viewer with a hard, appraising look. It’s as if she’s saying, “What are you looking at? This is my body.” Previous nude paintings were made for male voyeurism; here, Maja returns the gaze.
Let’s cast our eyes upon that green velvet sofa which drove the inquisitors crazy, and the white sheets cascading like a silk waterfall beneath her body. If you look closely at her facial makeup—the overly applied heavy blush—you will discover it was actually a popular “pathological beauty trend” in Madrid. Ladies of the time, striving for supposed exotic allure, were willing to use extremely toxic cosmetics containing lead and mercury, even artificially painting “fake sex appeal” onto their faces. Behind this beauty lurked the lethal risk of skin ulceration due to heavy metal poisoning.
The boldness of this painting perfectly mirrors the bizarre and chaotic years of late 18th and early 19th-century Spain. On one hand, there was the utterly archaic Inquisition holding ultimate power; on the other, high society and court nobles were corrupted to the extreme. They even popularized a fashion trend called “Majismo”—where grand aristocrats deliberately dressed up as lower-class “thugs” and “prostitutes” for thrill-seeking. The owner of this painting, Manuel Godoy, who was then the almighty First Minister of the Spanish cabinet, was the ultimate representative of this extreme contradiction.
Its legendary status is fit for an espionage thriller. Godoy actually owned two versions, this Nude Maja and an identical but fully dressed Clothed Maja. This nude was hidden in his ultra-secret private chamber; he even installed a pulley mechanism in front of it to keep it covered by a regular painting most of the time. Eventually, in 1815, the Inquisition tracked down and confiscated the painting, accusing Goya of drawing “obscene material” and nearly sending him to prison. It wasn’t until over a century later in 1901 that the Prado Museum finally dared to exhibit it publicly.
When you stand opposite her, are you the one scrutinizing this enchanting body, or is this stylish girl from over a century ago seeing right through your inner desires with her fearless gaze?