La Leocadia

La Leocadia (Spanish: Doña Leocadia) or The Seductress (Spanish: Una Manola) are names given to a mural by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, completed sometime between 1819–1823, as one of his series of 14 Black Paintings. It shows a woman commonly identified as Goya's maid, companion and (most likely) lover, Leocadia Weiss. She is dressed in a dark, almost funeral maja dress, and leans against what is either a mantelpiece or burial mound, as she looks outward at the viewer with a sorrowful expression. Leocadia is one of the final of the Black Paintings, which he painted in his seventies at a time when he was consumed by political, physical and psychological turmoil, after he fled to the country from his position as court painter in Madrid.

According to the c. 1828–1830 inventory of his friend Antonio Brugada, Leocadia was situated in the ground floor of Quinta del Sordo, Goya's villa which Lawrence Gowing observes was thematically divided: a male side of Saturn Devouring His Son and A Pilgrimage to San Isidro; and a female side compromising Judith and Holofernes, Witches' Sabbath, and Leocadia. All the works in the series were transferred to canvas after Goya's death and are now in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.