Woman Triumphant — Vicente Blasco Ibanez

Ibanez wrote Spanish realist novels and was also a director and screenwriter. He is best known for his novel The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Woman Triumphant of La Maja Desnuda was translated from the Spanish by Hayward Keniston. The title La Maja Desnuda translates into The Nude Model which is the name of a famous painting by Francisco Goya. The word maja has no equivalent meaning today. It referred to a woman of the lower class who loved dancing and exhibiting herself. When the book was first published it caused a scandal. Certain members of Madrid society thought they knew who the woman in the story was and they thought the man in the story was a famous painter who was a friend of Ibanez. Renovales, the hero, is simply the personification of human desire, Ibanez believed that the artistic community had a different life style form the more conventional people and that this in no way effected their moral character.