The White Duchess The White Duchess The White Duchess is a life sized (192 x 128 cm) oil-on-canvas painting by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya, completed in 1795 and now in the collection of the Duchess of Alba, Madrid. It portrays María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba, and is one of a number of portraits Goya painted of her around this time, and is usually compared alongside the similarly sized but tonally very different "Black Duchess", which was painted two years later, just after her husband, José Álvarez de Toledo died aged 39. The duke and duchess were highly placed, cultivated
María del Rosario de Silva, Duchess of Alba of Alba, thus becoming the Duchess of Alba. She had one daughter, Cayetana, born in 1926. She stayed with her family in the Liria Palace in Madrid and died there of tuberculosis, aged only 33. María del Rosario de Silva, Duchess of Alba Doña María del Rosario de Silva y Gurtubay, Duchess of Alba de Tormes, "suo jure" 9th Marquise of San Vicente del Barco, Grandee of Spain (Madrid, Spain; 4 April 1900 – 11 January 1934) was a Spanish aristocrat and socialite. Single heiress of all the titles of her father, Alfonso de Silva, 16th Duke of Híjar, and