Childhood Portrait of Manuela Téllez Girón, future Countess of Brunetti

This child portrait depicts María Josefa Gayoso de los Cobos y Téllez Girón, first-born daughter of the 12th Marquises of Camarasa, Josefa Manuela Téllez-Girón and Joaquín Gayoso de los Cobos, and the first granddaughter of the 9th Duke and Duchess of Osuna, whose family was portrayed, as a group and individually, on various occasions by Francisco de Goya and Agustín Esteve. It was the Duchess of Osuna - in her own right the Countess Duchess of Benavente - who commissioned Agustín Esteve in 1806 (Virginia Albarrán 2017) to portray what was then her only granddaughter. The painter depicts her in a white dress - very similar to the one her mother wore in the portrait the Valencian artist had painted of her eight years earlier, which is also in this collection in the Fundación Medinaceli - seated on a large blue cushion and pulling a red cord attached to a trunk of toy horses unhitched from their elegant carriage. The sitter was later known as the Countess of Brunetti after her marriage in 1824 to Lázaro Brunetti, a diplomat in the service of Emperor Franz I to Ferdinand VII.