José Álvarez de Toledo, Marquis von Villafranca und Herzog von Alba

Goya painted this in 1795, and he filled it with music. The Duke of Alba leans on a piano, a score resting under his hand, and it is a real one, four songs the duke had commissioned from Joseph Haydn in Vienna. He was a serious amateur musician, and Goya lets that define him instead of the usual aristocrat's sword or horse. There is a quiet sadness to it now, because within a year the duke was dead, still in his thirties. Goya knew the family well. The duke's widow, María Teresa, the Duchess of Alba, would sit for some of the painter's most famous and most gossiped-about portraits in the years just after.