Goya and the Beautiful Duchess (Part 1)

This post contained so many errors about the Duchess of Alba that I have decided to remove it.
My story was invented but based on facts I had gathered from several sources. After writing it I discovered a book called The Duchess of Alba—Goya’s Muse—Myth and History by Manuela B. Mena Marqués and Gudrun Mühle-Mauer, who have investigated all the known contemporary documents about the Duchess; and it became evident as I read it that my ideas were wrong.

The biggest errors were these:

The Duchess was not thought of as haughty by those who met her. Some descriptions by contemporaries come from diplomats who are notorious for calling great ladies “charming” and “most kind” and “engaging” and “gracious”. But no one seemed to think of Alba as arrogant—only beautiful, capricious, rebellious. No one, by the way, called the Duchess “Cayetana” in her time, though that was one of her Christian names.

There is no good reason to believe that she and her husband disliked each other or that she had lovers, including Goya. When her husband died, she put on black and retired like a good widow to her estate in Cadiz, far from Madrid. Giving up her social life must have been very hard for her.

The Duchess of Osuna was not her rival but her friend. The Osunas were Goya’s greatest single patrons. They commissioned dozens of paintings from him. Alba’s rival was the Queen of Spain, Maria Luisa de Parma, who was apparently jealous of Alba’s beauty and originality.

Here follows the original post which I will delete:

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“I bet you’d like to come here,” Goya wrote his friend Martin with a wink, “and help me paint Alba. She walked into my studio yesterday and wanted me to paint her face—and she had her way. By the way, I like doing that a lot better than painting canvas. She wants me to make a full-length portrait of her too and she’ll come as soon as I finish [another portrait I'm making]….”
(probably August 2, 1794)

This is the only mention Goya makes of the Duchess of Alba, who walked into his mind, as she had walked into his studio, and sat there in all her haughty loveliness until he died thirty years later.

Who was she? A princess out of a fairy-tale. She was second in rank only to the queen of Spain and with more and greater titles. Fabulously rich, haughty, capricious, beautiful. “Nothing in the world is as beautiful as she is,” moaned the French traveler Jean-Marie Fleuriot de Langle, “when she passes by everyone leans out their windows, and even children interrupt their games to look at her.”

Goya had met her, perhaps at the Duchess of Osuna’s salon, eight or ten years before. “Oh my,” said Osuna, interrupting what she was telling Goya and turning to watch Alba who had just barged through the door, “there’s Cayetana.”

The Duchess of Alba, Cayetana de Silva Álvarez, by Goya

Everyone in the salon interrupted their conversation and turned to look. Alba was dressed as a maja and wore a short jacket like a bullfighter. Her great mountain of jet-black hair she had tucked into a net. It wasn’t genuine maja dress at all but a rich woman’s imitation, fine, elegant, costly. Osuna’s guests of course all wore the long dresses in the French taste of Versailles.
“Oh I’m so delighted you were able to come,” Osuna told her as the two women kissed. “I had given up hope. Wasn’t there a bullfight today?”
Osuna glanced at her guests to oblige them to smile at what she said and to join in her attack on Alba.
“But didn’t you know?” said Alba. “It was cancelled because of some problem with the bulls.”
“Oh I never hear about bulls,” replied Osuna, flashing an evil grin left and right.
To Osuna the bullfight was strictly rabble entertainment. How could Alba go to a bullfight? What would she DO there sitting in all that low company and being gawked at by all those disgusting majas?

The Duchess of Osuna, by Goya

Alba ignored her and walked up to Goya and looked him squarely in the face. “So you are the painter.”
Goya looked down. Bashfulness? Deference: he was her humble servant. His eyes fell to the gilded buttons of her torero’s jacket, her deep décolleté, her thin waist—so thin he could have enclosed it in his hands.
“You must paint my husband,” she said after her inspection. “And ME!—soon—before I get too old.” She didn’t smile. Always something sphinx-like about the Duchess.
“But that can’t happen!” Goya wanted to say, “you will never, never, never lose your beauty.” But he couldn’t speak—she had a way of doing that to men. He could only watch her gilded jacket buttons gleam. Then she walked away.

Alba didn’t love her husband—everyone knew that. He was her cousin and the match was made by her parents when she was thirteen. There were no children. The couple was seen together only when that was required. The Duchess, with all her possessions and great family tradition, didn’t see herself as anyone’s side-kick. She did what the devil she wanted to.

The Duke of Alba, by Goya. He holds the score of a work by Joseph Haydn

Her husband, the Duke, actually came to Osuna’s party that evening to hear Luigi Boccherini play on the piano. Alba had left early. “I’m so sorry your wife couldn’t stay,” said the Duchess of Osuna.
“She’s so crazy,” said Alba’s husband.
“Oh, I can understand,” said Osuna, looking left and right. “She prefers to watch the gypsies dance.”

Now years later here comes Alba out of nowhere and pushes into Goya’s studio, making him drop what he was doing. “Paint my face,” she ordered. “Turn me into one of your majas. Make me a little silly.” She didn’t smile.
“Yes, Duchess,” said Goya. “Yes.”

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