The Black Duchess

Goya painted this in 1797, the year after the widowed Duchess of Alba, one of Spain's grandest aristocrats, retired to her estate at Sanlucar in the south, and Goya went with her. She wears the black lace and mantilla of a maja, the fashionable Madrid street style, in mourning for her late husband. Her hand points down at the sand, where two words are scratched, solo Goya, only Goya. On her fingers are two gold rings, one reading Alba and the other Goya. Whatever passed between the painter and the duchess, he kept this canvas himself for the rest of his life.