Goya Is Questioned by the Inquisition over the Two Majas refers to the March 1815 interrogation of Francisco Goya about the two paintings now associated with the names La maja desnuda and La maja vestida. The episode joins the paintings’ uncertain identity to an equally unresolved question of patronage: the Inquisition demanded explanations, but the surviving account says Goya’s answers were never given, leaving the commission unknown.

Background: Names and Classification

The episode places the title majas in a history of changing labels. In 1808, the women in the paintings were reportedly described as gypsies; the same designation appeared in a catalogue after Fernando VII confiscated Manuel Godoy’s properties in 1813. The account emphasizes that these descriptions came only a few years after the paintings were made, while Goya was still in good health and had not yet left—or been exiled to—France.

The distinction matters in the exchange that frames the historical account: when asked whether Ana could be called a maja, José rejects the identification and states that Ana was a gypsy. He then distinguishes that identity from the later label attached to Goya’s painted figures. The episode therefore treats maja not as an unquestioned original title, but as a name that came to accompany the paintings after other descriptions had already circulated.

The Inquisition’s Questions

In March 1815, the Inquisition summoned Goya because of the two paintings. Its questions were direct and cumulative: he was asked to acknowledge that he had painted them, say why he had done so, identify who had commissioned them, and explain for what purpose. The interrogation placed authorship, motive, patron, and intended use under scrutiny rather than settling any of them.

The account states that these questions were never answered. It consequently offers no confirmed patron or motive for the paintings, and notes that nobody knows with certainty who commissioned them. The Inquisition’s inquiry marks a documented moment of scrutiny, but not a resolution of the works’ history.

Uncertainty and the Paintings’ Afterlife

The name majas dates in this account to 1815, when the women were so called; from then on, the designation accompanied the paintings. Its later endurance contrasts with the uncertainty surrounding the original commission and with the earlier catalogue language of gypsies. The familiar name thus belongs to the paintings’ subsequent history, not to a securely established original title.

The episode also sits within a present-day conversation about Ana’s resemblance to a face Goya painted roughly two centuries before she could be seen under the sky. The narrator returns to look at the paintings after José’s explanation, but the historical facts do not establish who the depicted women were or why Goya painted them. Instead, the interrogation leaves those questions open, making the gap between a persistent label and an undocumented commission central to the paintings’ story.