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 goats, trampling the cross, and being re-baptised in the name of the Devil while giving their clothes to him, kissing his behind, and dancing back to back forming a round." As referenced earlier, Hawthorne seems to have been describing a witches' sabbath and the surrounding activity in his short story, "Young Goodman Brown." Musically, the supposed ritual has been used as inspiration for such works as Night on Bald Mountain by Modest Mussorgsky and the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique. In film, Robert Eggers' 2015 "The Witch" depicts a celebration of this ritual during the movie's climax. Also,