03 works, PORTRAIT OF A LADY, Franz Xaver Winterhalter and William Edward Frost's Florinda la Cava, with Footnotes. #132

Reigon, Francisco Jaén, 1840, 1884

Florinda, daughter of Count Don Julian, called La Cava, c. 1860

Oil on canvas

64 x 79 cm

National Prado Museum

The catalogue of the National Exhibition of Fine Arts published a fragment of the Picturesque Romance, Romance II, which describes the scene represented in the canvas: “Sitting around, La Cava told them all to measure their arms with a yellow ribbon.  The maidens measured themselves; La Cava did the same. In whiteness and everything else. La Cava thought she was alone; But as luck would have it, through a lattice King D. Rodrigo looked on. More on this painting

Reigon, Francisco 1840 , 1884 was a Spanish painter specialising in miniature and oil portraits, who also worked on the themes of history, mythology and landscape. He trained at the San Fernando Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid and was a disciple of Carlos de Haes. He participated in numerous exhibitions and shows, at the Academy (between 1842 and 1850) and at the National Fine Arts Festival, where he received a second-class honourable mention in the 1860 edition. More on Reigon, Francisco

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (German, Menzenschwand 1805–1873 Frankfurt)

 Florinda, c. 1853

Oil on canvas

70 1/4 x 96 3/4 in. (178.4 x 245.7 cm)

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Florinda la Cava (at center left), or simply La Cava, is a character who, according to legend, played a central role in the downfall of the Visigothic kingdom in Spain in 711. 

La Cava was the daughter (or in some early accounts, wife) of Count Julian, a figure whose historicity is doubtful. According to the earliest Arabic accounts, he was the Christian governor of Ceuta under the last Visigothic king, Roderic, a figure whose historicity is certain. She was either seduced by King Roderic, becoming his lover, or abducted by him and raped. In some versions, the king is depicted spying on her while she bathed in a garden. In others, she is the seducer. Afterwards, Julian, in order to avenge his dishonor on Roderic, colludes with the Umayyad forces (then subduing northern Africa) to invade Spain. More on Florinda

Franz Xaver Winterhalter (20 April 1805 – 8 July 1873). Born in a small village in Germany's Black Forest, Franz Xaver Winterhalter left his home to study painting at the academy in Munich. Before becoming court painter to Louis-Philippe, the king of France, he joined a circle of French artists in Rome. In 1835, after he painted the German Grand Duke and Duchess of Baden, Winterhalter's international career as a court portrait painter was launched. Although he never received high praise for his work in his native Germany, the royal families of England, France, and Belgium all commissioned him to paint portraits. His monumental canvases established a substantial popular reputation, and lithographic copies of the portraits helped to spread his fame.

Winterhalter's portraits were prized for their subtle intimacy, but his popularity among patrons came from his ability to create the image his sitters wished or needed to project to their subjects. He was able to capture the moral and political climate of each court, adapting his style to each client until it seemed as if his paintings acted as press releases, issued by a master of public relations. More on Franz Xaver Winterhalter

William Edward Frost

Florinda

Oil on canvas

70 x 86 cm ; 27 1/2 by 37 3/4 in.

Private collection

William Edward Frost (September 1810 – 4 June 1877) was an English painter of the Victorian era. Virtually alone among English artists in the middle Victorian period, he devoted his practice to the portrayal of the female nude.

Frost was educated in the schools of the Royal Academy, beginning in 1829; he established a reputation as a portrait painter before branching into historical and mythological subjects, including the subgenre of fairy painting that was characteristic of Victorian art. In 1839 he won the Royal Academy's gold medal for his Prometheus Bound, and in 1843 he won a prize in the Westminster Hall competition for his Una Alarmed by Fauns (a subject from Spenser's The Faerie Queene). He was elected an associate member of the Royal Academy in 1846, and a full member in 1870.

Frost is widely recognized as a follower of William Etty, who preceded him as the primary British painter of nudes in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Despite the prudishness of the Victorian era, Frost's relatively chaste nudes were popular, and his career was financially successful. More on William Edward Frost

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