Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo

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Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, c. 1805.

Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo (born June 10, 1762 , † July 23, 1802 in Sanlúcar la Mayor) was the 13th  Duchess of Alba .

Life

Maria del Pilar was born to Francisco de Paula de Silva y Alvarez de Toledo (1733–1770) and Mariana de Silva-Bazán y Sarmiento (1739–1784), her grandfather Fernando de Silva y Álvarez de Toledo was the 12th duke by Huéscar and Alba. She was married at the age of 13 to the Marquis of Villafranca José Álvarez de Toledo y Gonzaga (1756-1796). Her husband passed away when she was 34 years old. She then devoted herself to the organization of her property and the organization of sumptuous celebrations. It is possible that the Duchess had an affair with the painter Francisco de Goya from the early 1790s onwards . a. visited her country estate in Piedrahíta several times . He drew them several times between 1792 and 1801 and published the cycle of Caprichos with depictions of the Duchess in 1799 . "In fact, this romance must have been a whim of the unbridled lady." The Spanish poet Juan Meléndez Valdés (1754-1817) wrote a poem about "these shining eyes / this smiling mouth" of the Duchess.

Her early death - officially from a fever from tuberculosis - left room for various rumors that she had been poisoned.

Artistic processing

The alleged affair with Goya was picked up by various artists and in some cases freely embellished. Lion Feuchtwanger's novel Goya or the arge path of knowledge deals with the affair in a fictionalized form and, for example, attributed Goya's collapse in 1792 to a dispute with the duchess. In Carlos Saura's 1999 film Goya, the painter's relationship with the Duchess of Alba also plays a central role.

literature

  • Susan Waldmann: Goya and the Duchess of Alba , Munich, London, New York: Prestel 1998, ISBN 3-7913-2026-2 .

Web links

Commons : María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lucia Cerutti: Goya al Prado . Translated by Francesca Lopez and Peter Coreth . Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1989, p. 11f.
  2. ^ Antonius Lux (ed.): Great women of world history. A thousand biographies in words and pictures . Sebastian Lux Verlag , Munich 1963, p. 17.
personal data
SURNAME Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, Maria del Pilar Teresa Cayetana de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Silva y Álvarez de Toledo, Cayetana de
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Duchess of Alba
DATE OF BIRTH June 10, 1762
DATE OF DEATH July 23, 1802
Place of death Sanlúcar la Mayor