Lot 1061 D α

Adolf Mayer and Xavière Desparmet Fitz-Gerald considered the present composition to be an autograph work by Francisco de Goya. They saw the small oval picture as a preparatory design for his monumental painting ‘Spain, Time and History’ from the National Museum in Stockholm. This title can also be read on the old label on the reverse. Among more recent scholars of Goya, the attribution of this work - which originally came from the south of France and later from Italy - has not been recognised.
It depicts an enthroned female allegory. She holds an olive branch in one hand and a baton of Hermes in the other. As is well known, the olive branch is interpreted as a sign of peace, which is further emphasised by the mentioned baton. According to legend, Hermes found two fiercely fighting snakes, which he separated with an olive branch. Since then, the baton with the intertwined strikes has symbolised Hermes and the god himself as a peacemaker.
Above the main figure we see Fama, with a trumpet on her lips as a symbol of fame, and at her feet two putti pouring fruit and flowers from a cornucopia. Next to them are two stone lions. In the foreground, Chronos, the Allegory of Time, and another figure - perhaps the personification of history - looks up at her
Roman relief pieces, a pyramid and other female figures round off the composition. It is not clear whether the female allegory depicted here, as in the Stockholm painting, is intended to symbolise ‘Spain, Time and History’. In fact, however, the present composition also speaks of a truth yet to be revealed, peace, prosperity and power.

Xavier Desparmet Fitz-Gerald remembered this oval painting in the collection of Martín Zapater y Clavería, a wealthy Aragonese merchant whom Goya had met in Zaragoza and who subsequently became friends with him. After Zapater's death in 1803, his nephew Francisco Zapater y Gómez inherited his uncle's collection, including Goya's famous portrait of Martín Zapater, which is now in the Museum of Fine Arts in Bilbao. The painting later entered the collection of the lithographer Eduardo Portabella Arrizabalaga, from whom it passed into the possession of the graphic artist José Martinez Espinoza, a Spanish graphic artist who engraved numerous works by Goya.