La maja desnuda (known in English as The Naked (or Nude) Maja) is an oil on canvas painting by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya (1746–1828), portraying a nude woman reclining on a bed of pillows. It was executed some time between 1797 and 1800, and is sometimes said to be the first clear depiction of female pubic hair in a large Western painting. The painting has been in the Museo del Prado in Madrid since 1910.
   Goya created another painting of the same woman identically posed, but clothed, entitled La maja vestida (The Clothed Maja); also in the Prado, it is usually hung next to La maja desnuda. The identity of the model and why the paintings were created are still unknown.  According to some art historians, Manuel de Godoy (the Prime Minister of Spain from 1792 to 1797 and from 1801 to 1808 and the well-known lover of María Luisa, the Queen of Spain) commissioned the painting, and its clothed version ‘La maja vestida’.
   As to the artists’ model, it has been believed that the woman posing for ‘The Nude Maja’ was Manuel de Godoy’s longtime mistress Pepita Tudó (Josefa de Tudó, 1st Countess of Castillo Fiel, 1779-1869). Another view about the woman modeling for ‘The Nude Maja’ suggests the wealthiest woman of the era in Spain, María del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo (the 13th Duchess of Alba, and the wife of José María Alvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga, the 15th Duke of Medina-Sidonia) with whom Goya was romantically linked. Also, Goya had executed several famous portraits of The Duchess, shortly after the death of her husband, the Duke of Medina-Sidonia, in 1796.
   A third view is that the painting depicted neither of the women, but Goya modeled the female figure in The Nude Maja taking a composite image of different artists’ models or his favorite women. The painting has influenced several artists such as Édouard Manet who paraphrased Goya’s La maja desnuda in the painting ‘Olympia’ (1863), as also he was influenced by Titian’s Venus of Urbino (1538).