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
Enlightenment in Spain such as La Condamine and Alexander von Humboldt, to its overseas empire, usually closed to foreigners. There were extended Royal Botanical Expeditions to Chile and Peru (1777–88), New Granada (1783–1816), and New Spain (1787–1803), which produced a huge number of detailed botanical drawings and specimens destined for the Royal Botanical Garden and the Royal Natural History Cabinet in Madrid. The Malaspina Expedition was an important scientific expedition headed by Spanish naval commander Alejandro Malaspina over five years (1789–94), with naturalists and botanical illustrators gathering information for the Spanish crown. The illustrators on the voyage included José de Pozo, trained at