Lot Essay
Painted in 1876 the present work is a highly finished preparatory study for Pradilla's hugely successful painting Juana la Loca completed in 1877 (A. Garcia Loranca and J. Ramon Garcia-Rama, Vida y obra del pintor Francisco Pradilla Ortiz, no. 40, illustrated p. 324). The finished painting was awarded a Medal of Honour at the 1878 Exposición Nacional de Bellas Artes and now hangs in the Prado Museum, Madrid. The present work hung in the artist's studio until 1916.