El retrato retrata a una familia.

Because they come from the same root.

• retrato = a noun meaning portrait
• retrata = a verb form from retratar, meaning portrays

This is very common in Spanish: a noun and a related verb can look almost the same. Here, Spanish is doing something like The portrait portrays..., which sounds a bit repetitive in English too.

Retrata is the third-person singular present form of retratar.

It can mean:

• he portrays
• she portrays
• it portrays
• you portray (formal usted)

In this sentence, the subject is El retrato, so here it means it portrays.

Because the subject is El retrato, which is singular.

Sentence structure:

• El retrato = subject
• retrata = verb
• a una familia = direct object

A common beginner mistake is to look at familia and think it controls the verb, but it does not. The portrait is doing the action, so the verb agrees with retrato.

This is the personal a.

In Spanish, when the direct object is a person, people, or something treated as human, you usually put a before it.

So:

• retrata a una familia
• not retrata una familia

Even though familia is not one person, it refers to a group of people, so Spanish uses the personal a.

No. Here it is not an indirect object marker. It is the personal a used with a direct object.

So in this sentence:

• a una familia = direct object
• the a is there because the object refers to people

That can be confusing for English speakers, because English does not have an equivalent marker.

Spanish usually uses articles more often than English.

So El retrato means the portrait, referring to a specific portrait. If you said Un retrato, that would mean a portrait, a less specific one.

Using no article at all here would generally sound incomplete or unnatural in normal Spanish.

For the same general reason: Spanish often requires an article where English might not focus on one.

• una familia = a family
• la familia = the family

Here, una shows that it is some family, not a specific one already identified.

You know from the subject: El retrato.

Spanish verbs often do not need subject pronouns, so the verb form alone can be ambiguous. But once the noun subject is present, the meaning becomes clear.

So:

• retrata by itself could mean he/she/it portrays
• El retrato retrata... clearly means The portrait portrays...

It is grammatically correct, but it does sound a bit repetitive and stylistic because retrato and retrata repeat the same root.

Spanish speakers might also say things like:

• El retrato muestra a una familia.
• En el retrato aparece una familia.
• El retrato representa a una familia.

So the original sentence is valid, but not the most elegant everyday phrasing.

It is singular.

Even though a family contains multiple people, familia is grammatically a singular noun, like group in English.

So Spanish treats it as singular:

• una familia
• la familia es grande

If you wanted a plural idea, you would say familias.

The word order is the normal Spanish pattern:

Subject + verb + object

• El retrato = subject
• retrata = verb
• a una familia = object

That makes the sentence very straightforward. Spanish can change word order sometimes, but this version is the standard, neutral one.