LONDON — How to define the astonishing allure of this large portrait of Goya? He kept it in his workshop for years. In fact, to our knowledge, he never parted with it. It defined him. And yet the painting seems both very personal and strangely set apart, as if the subject possessed all the reality of a living human presence and all the unreality of something that can only be fragile and unstable, as inaccessible and elusive than any other fancy object. Look at her red face, for example, and the drama of those arching black eyebrows. It seems to have all the fragility of porcelain – or an intact egg – and all the clarity of a dream. And her look is… what exactly? A bit sad? A touch of impotence? A pleading touch? There is also a certain pride, a certain stiffness, if not haughtiness, in his attitude. This face looks a bit like a mask. The painter pays homage to her even as she rises above him. Is loneliness here too? She could pose for no one but herself.
He painted and drew this aristocratic woman with extravagant names—the 13th Duchess of Alba was christened Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva Alvarez de Toledo y Silva Bazan—many times. A softer white version predated this black version by two years. Goya also occasionally lived on his estate – she and her husband were wealthy patrons. This painting was made in 1797, a year after the death of this husband, which is why she is dressed in the black of mourning. Did Goya perhaps see in this death an opportunity to establish some sort of connection? Oh sad and vain man. Such desperate, helpless ardour.
Like many other men (numerous correspondences prove this), Goya was completely fascinated by her beauty. She played there. She was flighty and flirtatious. She was a skilled dancer. Goya himself was neither handsome nor young: she was 35 when he painted her, he was 51. The legend of her beauty lived long into the future. Ava Gardner played her, in a 1958 film titled The Naked Maja. Was this portrait perhaps a mode of possession, an almost living, breathing substitute for the relationship with her that he certainly never had?
Goya became a great portrait painter in the 1790s. His ability to paint portraits of extraordinary brilliance also coincided with the onset of deafness, an ailment that took hold of him in 1792. Perhaps the loss of he sense adds a degree of intensity and particularity to the nature and quality of his gaze.
He placed her alone—in his country estate? — in a rather dusty, smoky landscape, which seems to slip away from our attention (as if it knows its place) as it advances. She is so well done. The trees are balls of misty puffs by comparison. Look at how the rear end of that red sash, which seems to partially define the curvature of her right hip, sits against the perspective of trees directly behind and beside it, defined by its indefiniteness. This change in his painting technique happens instantly. From the sharp, closely observed particularity to the pale blur of distance. These two passages could be separated by 80 years.
She stands an imposing height in web-like proportions, lifted all the higher perhaps by the way the web of cobwebs of her mantilla climbs through and over her blaze of black curls, almost framing and amplifying her hairline. The uniform grayness of the sky serves as a backdrop to the melancholy of mourning. Yet it’s not just that – grief is only part of that story. There’s something potentially dashing about her, too, as if all that black is also the black of the teasing of concealment, at least in part. Also, although the color of her clothes is rather dark, it is undeniable that she is dressed in fashionable thrift clothes of the kind that Goya loved to paint. And how finely embroidered the bottom of her long dress! Goya sees everything and sets great store by it.
Also see how her forearms shimmer with color (maybe there are little nugget beads woven into the fabric?), her left hand on her hip. And how her slippery, sinuous mantilla, which wraps around her chest, also admits a few hints of color, as if there could be more than a hint of erotic allure, at least half a promise of revelation. bare flesh. Oh to be that enveloping mantilla! And watch how these dazzling golden shoes have their way with us. Her left foot, sharp and defiant, is turned quite dramatically, as if it could be the first step of a dance she leads.
And then there is, of course, that pointing finger of his slender right hand, and what he tells us. Or maybe it would be better to say what the painter is quite deliberately conjuring, because in that pointing finger, and what it points to on the dusty floor below, we find almost all of Goya’s helpless howls of desire so carefully contained. A message is scrawled in the sand. It is a looped writing of the kind that two close friends could indulge in. The two words read — you have to decipher them backwards; the message is for the Duchess’ eyes only – “Solo Goya” (only Goya). (Notice that the date of the painting, also languidly scribbled in the sand, faces us; this useful information is to be shared.) There is a certain ambiguity in this assertion: that Goya and she are two inseparable; that it is meant for him alone. It might also suggest that only Goya would be capable of something as magnificent as this painting, and his pointing finger acknowledges that fact. Like Hitchcock, Goya often interferes in his own work by leaving messages in the sand like this, or by having a black bird conveniently hold his business card in its beak.
The way his finger recognizes the presence of this message is also fascinating (the tip of his nail is painted in soft pink). His forearm seems to drop and straighten, helpless, as if drawn by the sheer force of emotional gravity, to make such a move, and can’t help but do what it does. She falls victim to what seems almost inevitable. Another detail also: the two rings that rub shoulders on her fingers. One of them is inscribed with the word Alba, and the other Goya. His name is wrapped around his finger.
And so Goya dresses neatly in his own world of fantasy: he will have it in the end. They are inseparable. And so it had to be – as far as this canvas is concerned. In life, where the climate is much cooler, it was, alas, otherwise.
Goya’s “The Duchess of Alba” is on view Spain and the Hispanic World: Treasures from the Hispanic Society Museum and Library At Royal Academy of Arts (Burlington House, London, England) until April 10. The exhibition was curated by Adrian Locke, Per Rumberg and Guillaume Kientz.
