SPAIN: Maja Diagnosed

For a century and a half, the story was one of the tidbits in Europe’s chronique scandaleuse. Spain’s great painter Francisco José Goya y Lucientes, also known as “the Turbulent,” took a more than artistic interest in the beautiful Maria Teresa, Duchess of Alba (so gossip whispered in history’s ear), and amused himself by painting her in the nude. A well-wisher tipped off her husband, the 13th Duke of Alba, who flew into a boiling Spanish rage. Gallant Goya had to think fast.

At high speed he proceeded to do a second painting of the Duchess in exactly the same pose (reclining on a couch, her arms folded under her head, a subtly inviting smile on her lips), but this time dressed in white silk. Confronted with the second picture, the Duke was temporarily appeased; but something apparently went wrong, he found out the truth and promptly poisoned his unfaithful wife. Goya lived to be 82, and the two pictures became world-famous as La Maja Vestida (Gay Lady Clothed) and La Maja Desnuda (Gay Lady Nude).

Last week, before a tense meeting of Madrid’s Academy of History, Dr. Carlos Blanco Soler denounced the whole scandal as a frivolous fraud. Since December, he said, he and two fellow scholars had been examining the Duchess’ mummified body. Their verdict was death from natural causes—meningeal encephalitis, aggravated by tuberculosis, as evidenced by a tubercular lesion in the right lung and a spinal curvature. The experts reported no traces of poison.

Dr. Soler added that, according to his research, Goya probably had never been the Duchess’ lover. Reason: her Grace was cold, narcissistic—not stormy Goya’s type. The tale had just been dreamed up by writers, probably French.

Present and pleased to hear his great-great-grandfather exonerated of uxoricide and his great-great-grandmother of adultery with a commoner was the 17th Duke of Alba, who himself presided over the meeting.