Leocadia or the reason for Francisco de Goya's exile in Bordeaux

I don't know if Leocadia Zorrilla Galarza would forgive me for including her among the profane women. She was a radical liberal and acted accordingly. Leocadia is one of the most elusive when it comes to fitting her into any of the categories of women established in this investigation. She needs a fresh look to emerge from the obscurity in which she lived. It can be said, with some reservation, that she painted a political portrait of herself during the Constitutional Triennium, and upon the return of absolutism, she and Goya chose to go into exile because she was persecuted; he was pampered by Ferdinand VII .

Leocadia and her siblings were orphaned by their mother, rejected by their stepmother. Leocadia was taken in by her aunt, Juana Galarza , whose daughter, Gumersinda Goicoechea Galarza , married Javier Goya , the painter's son. The artist's biographers suggest, with a high degree of probability, that Goya and Leocadia may have met on the day of his son's wedding to her cousin, when the painter was 59 and she was 16 . The relationship they began from that day on is unknown. At 18, she married a German-Jewish jeweler with a workshop in Madrid. The bride brought a dowry of 230,570 reales to the marriage. A substantial sum, but she did not have a mandate over it, but instead gave it to her husband . She had two sons, Joaquín and Guillermo, before her husband, Isidro, denounced her for "infidelity, illicit dealings, and misconduct ; in addition to a haughty and threatening temper."

In the accusation, he avoided adultery, but he did not spare other insults. In 1814 , Rosario Weiss Zorrilla was born. The biological paternity of the girl has been subject to doubt as to whether it was attributed to the jeweler or the widowed painter . The jeweler was on the verge of ruin. Her dowry had disappeared. Leocadia sought work or shelter as a housekeeper with the artist, who had acquired the Quinta del Sordo for 60,000 reales. A comfortable and spacious country house outside Madrid that had belonged to a deaf man and, as luck would have it, was bought by another deaf man. Goya was the favorite painter of the Court. The invader Joseph I granted him the Royal Warrant of Spain, which branded him as a Frenchman and harmed him after the French left . He had to undergo the purification process "with blemish." The file states that he never used the Royal Warrant granted by Pepe Botella. In 1815 he was cleared, his name included on the list of “patriotic employees.”

Goya lives at Quinta del Sordo with Leocadia and her two young children. The role of housekeeper suits everyone . The portraitist's health is failing; she takes care of the mansion. In addition to being a lively mother, she is also a liberal and a defender of the Cádiz Constitution , so she recruits her son Guillermo into the Children's Battalion in defense of constitutionalism. Denounced by her husband, criticized for her political ideas, and with a son in the Children's Battalion, Leocadia's record is sufficient for her to be pursued by the police when the Triennium ends and repression returns. They decide to go into exile, separately , although he does not appear to be a danger to the regime of Ferdinand VII, to whom the artist writes requesting a monthly payment for his work at Court and permission to travel to France to take the healing waters.

From this period of living together at the Quinta del Sordo emerged the best-known portrait of Leocadia. A Goyaesque image in terms of the sobriety of her dress; a veil covers her head, revealing her face to her penetrating gaze , and even more so the generous neckline from which her well-proportioned breasts peek out. She is a young, natural woman in an informal posture: leaning on what has been interpreted as a tomb, awaiting the unknown . The contemplative position of her body brings her closer to the majas (naked or dressed) than to the dolled-up and dolled-up duchesses. Goya also distances her from the common women or the water carriers. Leocadia has a special status ; her small, dark eyes can be seen in the spinner in Allegory of Industry , a homage to Velázquez's The Spinners .

The King's chief steward writes about Goya that "His Majesty has been pleased to grant him Royal permission for a period of six months to go and take the mineral waters of Plombieres, France, in order to alleviate his ailments." With this letter, he set off for France , but did not stop in Plombieres or any other spa. He first anchored in Bayonne and Bordeaux to contact those helping liberal refugees , among them Leandro Fernández de Moratín . He then arrived in Paris, met with the Countess of Chinchón and Pepita Tudó . The French police informed the Ministry of the Interior that the traveler presented no danger. Judging by his appearance, " he seemed older than his years, and was deaf ."

On June 27, 1824, Moratín wrote: "Dear Juan: Goya has indeed arrived, deaf, old, clumsy, and weak , without knowing a word of French, and without bringing a servant (which no one but he needs), and so happy and so eager to see the world . He stayed here for three days; two of them he ate with us as a young student. I have urged him to return in September, and not to get bogged down in Paris and be surprised by the winter that would finish him off. He is carrying a letter so that Arnao can see where to accommodate him, and take all the necessary precautions with him, which are many, and the main one, in my opinion, is that he not leave the house except by carriage; but I do not know if he will agree to this condition."

As planned, Goya returned to Bordeaux with Leocadia, Guillermo and Rosario, and some of the Goicoechea relatives. Leocadia landed in Bayonne, where she was issued a passport to “Bordeaux where she will meet her husband.” Leocadia must have been fed up with explaining her relationship with Goya. If she had slipped up by calling him “husband,” he saw Rosario as his daughter. Goya wrote to the banker Joaquín Ferrer , living in Paris, to tell him that he wanted to send Rosario to study drawing in the French capital, and asked Ferrer to treat her “ as if she were my daughter, offering you the reward either with my works or with my assets.”

They functioned as a family. Moratín, advanced as he was, resented the young, independent-minded, and lascivious woman who accompanied the octogenarian artist. Moratín expresses irony and sarcasm about Leocadia while sprinkling reverences on Goya and himself: "Goya is now, with his lady and the children, in a good furnished room in a good location; I think he will be able to spend the winter there very comfortably. He wants to paint my portrait, and from that I infer how handsome I am [...] Goya is here with Doña Leocadia; I don't notice the greatest harmony between them [...] Goya has taken a very comfortable little house with lights from the North and South, and a little bit of garden: a brand new house alone, where he feels very well. Doña Leocadia, with her usual intrepidity, complains at times, and at times she has fun . Mariquita [Rosario] already speaks French like a log, sews and jumps and entertains herself with some little birds her own age [...] I heard them talking about some blankets they had received. It is strange that Doña Leocadia has not written to you; "Goya is not to be admired, because it is very difficult for him to write a letter."

From the correspondence of the four years of exile, a Leocadia emerges resigned to the fact that everything was going against her. Goya traveled to Madrid in 1826 and 1827, two trips that demonstrate that exile was not as forced on him as it was on Leocadia, who remained in France. In Madrid, he tied up inheritance matters, making his son Javier, without a job but with paternal benefit, his sole heir. He left Leocadia with some of the household furniture, the remainder of the month's rent, a sum of money in case they wanted to return to Spain, and the painting The Milkmaid . Goya's death aggravated Leocadia's problems, and she informed Moratín: "Her side was paralyzed; she'd been like that for 13 days. She knew everyone up until three hours before she died, she could see her hand, but as if in a daze. She wanted to make a will, she said, in our favor, and her daughter-in-law replied that she had already made it."

In 1829, the year after the painter's death, Leocadia put the painting The Milkmaid up for sale, "out of necessity" and for the price of "no less than an ounce," as "the deceased" stated. The letter begins in her typical style by saying: "Although I am a woman, I have character and my word." She best describes herself. The sale of The Milkmaid did not prevent her subsequent destitution. She fought for part of Goya's inheritance, but lost it, as she had lost her dowry and her family's assets. Her son Guillermo was imprisoned in Bergerac for participating in the Vera de Bidasoa expedition, led by Espoz y Mina , to overthrow absolutism. She requested a subsidy from the French government, citing political asylum "to escape the persecution and insults of all kinds that her political opinions and the fact that her son Guillermo Weiss was an officer in the voluntary militia had attracted." He was granted 1.50 francs a month.

The amnesty of 1833 brought them back to Spain, where Rosario worked as a copyist at the Prado Museum ; she was appointed drawing teacher to Princess Isabel and Infanta Luisa Fernanda. Leocadia's happiness was cut short with Rosario's death at the age of 29. An unnatural death; a pension of four reales.

Isidro died destitute . Leocadia succumbed to life in 1856 without a will; she left behind two sons, Joaquín and Guillermo, all she had left, her genetics, and, by then, they were no longer hers.