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
Spanish art Subias (1734–1795), a skilled fresco painter, and of Mariano Salvador Maella (1739–1819) who both developed in the direction of the severe Neoclassicism of Mengs. Another important avenue for Spanish artists was portraiture, which was an active sphere for Antonio González Velázquez (1723–1794), Joaquín Inza (1736–1811) and Agustín Esteve (1753–1820). But it is in the genre of the still life that royal patronage was also successfully found, in the works by artists such as the court painter Bartolomé Montalvo (1769–1846) and Luis Egidio Meléndez (1716–1780). Continuing in the Spanish still life tradition of Sánchez Cotán and Zurbarán, Meléndez produced a series