The Black Duchess The Black Duchess The Black Duchess (also Mourning Portrait of the Duchess of Alba or simply Portrait of the Duchess of Alba) is a 1797 oil-on-canvas painting by Spanish painter Francisco Goya. The Duchess in the painting is María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba, then 35 years old. It is a companion piece to the more chaste "The White Duchess", completed two years earlier. In this work, de Silva is dressed in low cut "Maja" clothing. She probably agreed to this depiction in that it might show her as a "woman of the people". , the painting has
Witches' Sabbath to the witches' equivalent to the Christian day of rest; a more common term was "synagogue" or "synagogue of Satan" possibly reflecting anti-Jewish sentiment, although the acts attributed to witches bear little resemblance to the Sabbath in Christianity or Jewish Shabbat customs. The "Errores Gazariorum" ("Errors of the Cathars"), which mentions the Sabbat, while not discussing the actual behavior of the Cathars, is named after them, in an attempt to link these stories to an heretical Christian group. Christian missionaries' attitude to African cults was not much different in principle to their attitude to the Witches' Sabbath in Europe; some