Josefa Tudó with her Sons Manuel and Luis Godoy
After 1812.Room 062
Portrait of Josefa Tudó, 1st Countess of Castillo Fiel – the lover and later the wife of Charles IV’s Minister, Manuel Godoy – with her sons Manuel and Luis, portrayed as Aphrodite, Eros and Anteros, beside a classical bust of the Minister himself. The iconography, of a private nature, elevates family ties to mythological proportions and reflects a complex family situation. The miniature based on the painting disseminated this iconography, linking it to an image – produced for propaganda purposes – of Godoy in exile, as a promoter of classical archaeology.
