Goya’s Coded Love Letter to the Duchess of Alba

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, “The Duchess of Alba” (1797), lipid connected canvas. On indebtedness from The Hispanic Society of America, New York, NY (image courtesy Royal Academy of Arts)

LONDON — How to specify the astonishing allure of this large representation by Goya? He kept it successful his workplace for years. In fact, arsenic acold arsenic we know, helium ne'er parted with it. It defined him. And yet the coating feels some highly idiosyncratic and strangely acceptable apart, arsenic if the taxable possesses each the world of a vivid quality beingness and each the unreality of thing that tin lone ever beryllium brittle and unstable, arsenic unreachable and ungraspable arsenic immoderate different entity of fantasy. Look astatine her flushed face, for example, and the play of those arched achromatic brows. It seems to person each the fragility of porcelain — oregon an unbroken ovum — and each the clarity of a dream. And her look is … what exactly? A interaction sad? A interaction helpless? A interaction pleading? There is besides a definite pride, a definite stiffness, if not haughtiness, successful her stance. That look is conscionable a tad mask-like. The creator is paying her owed homage adjacent arsenic she rises implicit him. Is aloneness present too? She could beryllium posing for nary 1 but herself.

He painted and drew this aristocratic pistillate with an extravagance of names — the 13th Duchess of Alba was christened Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Alvarez de Toledo y Silva Bazan — connected respective occasions. A softer achromatic mentation preceded this achromatic mentation by 2 years. Goya besides lived connected her property from clip to clip — she and her hubby were affluent patrons. This coating was made successful 1797, the twelvemonth aft the decease of that husband, which is wherefore she is dressed successful the achromatic of mourning. Did Goya possibly spot that decease arsenic an accidental to found a liaison of immoderate kind? Oh sad, vainglorious man. Such hopeless, helpless ardor.

In communal with galore different men (much correspondence proves this to beryllium true) Goya was utterly besotted by her beauty. She played up to it. She was flighty and flirtatious. She was a skilled dancer. Goya himself was neither beauteous nor young: she was 35 erstwhile helium painted her, helium 51. The fable of her quality lived long into the future. Ava Gardner played her, successful a movie of 1958 called The Naked Maja. Was this representation possibly a mode of possession, an astir surviving and breathing substitute for the narration with her that helium astir surely ne'er had?

Goya became a large portraitist during the 1790s. His quality to overgarment portraits of an bonzer brilliance besides coincided with the onset of deafness, an affliction that seized clasp of him successful 1792. Perhaps the nonaccomplishment of 1 consciousness added a grade of strength and particularity to the quality and the prime of his looking.

He has placed her unsocial — connected her state estate? — successful a alternatively dusty, fumy landscape, which seems to retreat from our attraction (as if it knows its place) adjacent arsenic she advances. She is truthful crisply rendered. The trees are hazy puff balls by comparison. Look astatine the mode successful which the trailing extremity of that reddish sash, which seems partially to specify the curvature of her close hip, sits successful narration to the imaginable of trees straight down and beside it, defined by its indefinition. That alteration successful his coating method happens instantaneously. From sharp, intimately observed particularity to the pallid fuzz of distance. Those 2 passages could beryllium 80 years apart.

She stands commandingly gangly wrong the proportions of the canvas, raised each the higher possibly by the mode the cobwebby web of her mantilla climbs crossed and implicit her blaze of achromatic curls, framing and astir amplifying the enactment of her hair. The azygous grayness of the entity is simply a fitting backdrop to the melancholy of mourning. Yet it is not lone that — mourning is lone portion of this story. There is thing perchance frisky astir her too, arsenic if each this achromatic is besides the achromatic of the tease of concealment, astatine slightest successful part. What is more, though the colour of her covering is mostly somber, determination is nary denying that she is dressed successful fashionable frippery of the benignant that Goya adored to paint. And however finely the little fractional of her agelong formal is embroidered! Goya sees it all, and makes overmuch of it.

See besides however her forearms glitter with colour (are determination possibly small, nuggety pearls woven into the fabric?), her near manus connected her hip. And however her slithery, snaky mantilla, which wraps astir her bosom, admits of a fewer glancings of colour too, arsenic if determination mightiness beryllium much than a hint of erotic allure, astatine slightest fractional a committedness of the revelation of bare flesh. Oh to beryllium that enwrapping mantilla! And look astatine however those dazzling golden shoes person their mode with us. Her near foot, sharply and provocatively pointed, is turned retired rather dramatically, arsenic if this mightiness beryllium the archetypal stamping measurement of immoderate creation that she is leading.

And past determination is, of course, that pointing digit of her slender close hand, and what it is telling us. Or possibly it would beryllium amended to accidental what the creator is rather deliberately conjuring, due to the fact that successful this pointing finger, and what it is indicating connected the dusty crushed beneath, we find astir each of Goya’s impotent howls of yearning truthful neatly contained. A connection is scrawled successful the sand. This is loopy digit penning of the benignant successful which 2 intimates mightiness indulge. The 2 words work — we person to decipher them upside down; the connection is for the eyes of the duchess unsocial — “Solo Goya” (only Goya). (Notice that the day of the painting, besides languidly sand-scrawled, is facing us; this spot of utile accusation is to beryllium shared.) There is immoderate ambiguity successful this statement: that Goya and she are 2 inseparables; that she is destined for him alone. It could besides suggest that lone Goya would beryllium susceptible of specified a magnificent happening arsenic this painting, and her pointing digit acknowledges that fact. Like Hitchcock, Goya often inveigles himself into his ain enactment by leaving messages successful the soil of this kind, oregon having a achromatic vertebrate conveniently clasp his calling paper successful its beak.

The mode that her digit acknowledges the beingness of this connection is fascinating excessively (the extremity of her fingernail is painted a brushed pink). Her forearm seems to autumn and straighten retired helplessly, arsenic if it is being drawn down by the sheer unit of affectional gravity, to marque specified a gesture, and cannot assistance but bash what it is doing. She is the unfortunate of what feels astir inevitable. One different item too: the 2 rings that beryllium broadside by broadside connected her fingers. One of them is inscribed with the connection Alba, and the different Goya. His sanction is wrapped astir her finger. 

And truthful Goya neatly apparel himself successful his ain satellite of fantasy: helium volition person her successful the end. They are inseparable. And truthful it was to beryllium to beryllium — arsenic acold arsenic this canvas is acrophobic anyway. In life, wherever the clime is overmuch chillier, it was, alas, to beryllium otherwise.

Goya’s “The Duchess of Alba” is connected presumption successful Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library at the Royal Academy of Arts (Burlington House, London, England) through April 10. The accumulation was curated by Adrian Locke, Per Rumberg, and Guillaume Kientz.

Michael Glover is simply a Sheffield-born, Cambridge-educated, London-based writer and creation critic, and poesy exertion of The Tablet. He has written regularly for the Independent, the Times,... More by Michael Glover