In this superb drawing acquired in 1997, two different and independent motives are overlapped. The main one is a nude woman on a bed, but arches and architectural elements have been drawn over it. The woman is not lying down, as is customary in this type of image. Instead, she is reclining, and that generates a very special tension between her expression of receptive abandon and a position that suggests something more than rest. The subject of this work is unknown, if in fact it is anything more than a nude study. From a formal and narrative standpoint, it is clearly related to the world of mythological images, rather than to other repertories that can also include female nudes, such as allegories or Bible stories, as what this woman transmits is only recognizable in the context of certain classical fables. This work bears curious similarities to a drawing by Alonso Cano at the Uffizi, whose subject is debatable, but unquestionably mythological: a similar reclining nude woman is attended by a cherub and accompanied by a figure of ambiguous identity. The two drawings are very similar in a formal sense. Both are constructed with the same technique, which clearly emphasizes the body profiles and resolves the volumes with nervous and continuous hatching. Moreover, the two women’s postures are similar, with one arm resting in much the same manner on the bed, and the legs equally spread. Both have the same small elevation around the navel, which descends rapidly to the pubis, and both turn their heads in a similar manner, transmitting a sense of sexual abandon. The most notable difference between the two is the inclination of their bodies, which is much greater in the present drawing than in the one from Florence. The natural accompaniment to this anatomy is on a higher plain, and this is even more evident when comparing this work to the one at the Uffizi. All of this, along with the general relaxation of the limbs and the receptivity transmitted by the figure’s spread legs leads us to consider a scene from classical mythology that was among the erotic subjects most frequently depicted in the Western tradition: the story of Danaë, whom Jupiter visited in the form of goden rain while she was confined to a tower. A drawing of those characteristics can only be satisfactorily explained as something Cano made after arriving at court. Until 1638, he worked in Seville, primarily with clients that demanded works of a religious character, and while there were collections of ancient sculpture in that city, including a splendid one belonging to the Duke of Alcalá, the atmosphere was not conducive to the generation of profane images, much less mythological nudes. In Madrid, however, Cano had access to the Royal Collections, with their abundance of classical fables, and to an artistic atmosphere which already believed that the nude was one of the fundamental art forms, and a field that some of the finest painters had employed to display their finest capacities. This was clear in some of the king’s own paintings. The present Female Nude bears traces of some of the nude images that had left their mark on Cano’s imagination. Its debt to the Sleeping Nymph -a splendid sculpture that was in the Duke of Alcala’s collection- has been suggested, but its relaxed abandon and the immediacy with which the profile of a female body is presented also bring this drawing into the lineage of Titian’s Danaë Receiving the Golden Rain (P00425), which was one of the jewels of the Royal Collection. Still, while those works were on Cano’s creative horizon when he addressed this motif, his representation of the female nude is very original in its use of irregular, trembling lines (though they are actually both confident and efficient) that transmit the bodily emotion in an incomparable fashion (Text drawn from Portús, J.: No solo Goya, Adquisiciones para el Gabinete de Dibujos y Estampas del Museo del Prado 1997-2010, Museo del Prado, 2011, pp. 21-24).