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
Fernando de Silva, 12th Duke of Alba Fernando de Silva, 12th Duke of Alba Fernando de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, 12th Duke of Alba, GE, KOGF, KOHS, KOC (27 October 1714 – 15 November 1776), was a Spanish politician and general who was Prime Minister of Spain in 1754. Better known as the Duke of Huéscar, Fernando de Silva was a man of the Enlightenment and friend of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was Spanish ambassador to France between 1746 and 1749. On November 8, 1753 he was appointed Mayordomo mayor and chief of the Royal Household and, on April 9, 1754 he was made director of the