María Tomasa Palafox (1780-1835), Marchioness of Villafranca, is shown wearing a white empire-style dress and sitting on a red silk damask armchair, with her feet on a cushion. She is painting a portrait of her husband, Francisco de Borja Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga, XI Marquis of Villafranca.

The Marchioness was an academician of merit at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid. She was cultured and a great lover of the arts, as well as an amateur painter. she is looking outside the space of the composition, perhaps at her husband, who appears on her painting in the uniform of an official of the line infantry. On her right, over a night table, is her palette of paints, some brushes and a small metal bowl. The Marquis looks back at his wife from his own portrait in a play of glances that Goya uses consciously, perhaps to reflect the great love that, according to contemporaneous sources, this couple felt for each other.