#dogs

Painted around the time she married into the family of Spain's chief minister, from what I can find — the sort of match that was half business, and the portrait was part of announcing it. The clothes are French, which is what you wore in Madrid if you could afford to.

Tthe model was apparently his own dog — a big white shepherd — and some say it's the same dog painted twice. A couple of years later he was the man doing blue horses and yellow cows; this is just before all that started.