Be This Guy has it right: Francesco de Goya’s portrait of the same woman, María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba, dressed in black, is much more interesting and sexier too.
This painter, not to be confused with the far better and much more famous Goya, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, was commissioned to do a set of life-size portraits of the Dukes of Alba.
Historian Janis Tomlinston wrote in 1994 that “no matter how liberal a patron she might have been, it seems unlikely that she would have accepted a portrait that so mercilessly emphasized her pride and hauteur”. So Melcher has the caption about right too!
There are good Wikipedia articles on the painter and on the paintings as well, from which I pulled the above info.
Be This Guy has it right: Francesco de Goya’s portrait of the same woman, María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba, dressed in black, is much more interesting and sexier too.
This painter, not to be confused with the far better and much more famous Goya, Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, was commissioned to do a set of life-size portraits of the Dukes of Alba.
Historian Janis Tomlinston wrote in 1994 that “no matter how liberal a patron she might have been, it seems unlikely that she would have accepted a portrait that so mercilessly emphasized her pride and hauteur”. So Melcher has the caption about right too!
There are good Wikipedia articles on the painter and on the paintings as well, from which I pulled the above info.