Allegory of the City of Madrid

Goya's Allegory of the City of Madrid from 1809–10, in the Museo de Historia de Madrid, is the most politically unstable painting in his entire oeuvre — a canvas whose central medallion was repainted at least four times as political control of Madrid changed hands across the upheavals of the Peninsular War and the Restoration. Originally depicting Joseph Bonaparte, the French-installed king, the central oval was replaced successively with the word 'constitución' following the liberal constitution of 1812, then with a portrait of the restored Ferdinand VII, then finally with the text 'Dos de Mayo' commemorating the 1808 uprising. Each repainting reflects not artistic decision but political necessity, and the painting's layered surface preserves the physical record of Spain's turbulent political history in its x-ray structure. Goya's ability to work for successive and mutually contradictory regimes — French, liberal constitutional, and absolutist Bourbon — while maintaining his private integrity is the central moral puzzle of his biography, and this painting is its visual embodiment.

Goya arranges allegorical figures of Madrid's virtues around the central oval with the classical vocabulary expected of civic commissions. The warm palette and the accomplished handling of the female figures contrast with the painting's troubled history of political revision.