A practically unbreakable urban legend maintains that Goya used the Duchess of Alba, his protector and friend, who knows how intimate, as a model for his famous majas, dressed and naked. However, in 1945, the then Duke of Alba, Luis Martínez de Irujo, ordered the remains of his famous ancestor to be exhumed to end the myth once and for all. Three medical doctors concluded that the aristocrat could not be her model because she suffered from a serious deformation of the spine (scoliosis) to the right side, which caused a notable elevation of the shoulder on the same flank. In addition, by the time the work was painted, recently attacked by an environmental group, the aristocrat was already very ill and aged, at 40 years old.
Today, the most accepted theory is that the real body portrayed was none other than that of Pepita Tudó, based on the fact that the first documentary evidence of these canvases places them in the house of Manuel Godoy, in 1800. This Andalusian woman with a military father began an extramarital relationship with Godoy, Carlos IV’s main secretary. Discretion was not among the virtues of this woman, whose affair with the Prince of Peace lasted through her marriage and placed both women, wife and lover, on the same public level. The writer Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanoson the occasion of a meal that Godoy offered him in the Grimaldi Palace for having been appointed Minister of Grace and Justice, a position that lasted him about a year, noted the deep impression that he felt seeing the two women sitting at the table , and the gallant, in the middle, as if it were a sultan:
«At his right side, the princess; to her left, Pepita Tudó. This show ends in my bewilderment. My soul could not bear it. I didn’t eat, I didn’t speak, I couldn’t calm my spirit. I ran away from there.”
The Generalissimo married the Countess of Chinchón, the daughter of the infante Louis of Bourbon, so that it strengthened even more ties with the Royal Family. Godoy felt in this way a full member of the Bourbons and began to act with princely gestures, among other whims dressing the servants of his Madrid court in red stockings, a right reserved for royalty. She, however, refused to participate in her husband’s stridency. The Countess of Chinchon she went to live far from Godoy in 1808. She never wanted to call herself the Princess of Peace, always the Countess of Chinchón. And she did not want to know more about the daughter she had with Godoy, Carlota, sponsored by the Kings, who would accompany her father on her exodus through Europe.
Pepita died at her home in September 1869, at the age of 90, a victim of burns caused by a brazier
The extramarital relationship first became informal and, later, official. Pepita and Godoy celebrated a secret wedding on July 22, 1797 in the chapel of El Pardo and accompanied King Carlos and Maria Luisa to their Italian exile as full-fledged married couples. In 1832, Pepita convinced her husband to move to Paris, where Godoy became host to the many Spanish escapees from the jaws of Ferdinand VII. Godoy’s wife acquired property, jewelry valued at more than four million francs, and large debts. In 1834, Tudó returned to Madrid at her expense. She died in her home in September 1869, at the age of 90, a victim of burns caused by a brazier.
The secret of an “obscene” work
Everything related to the Majas of Francisco de Goya, the dressed and the naked, who originally received the name of “gypsies” is a mystery. The first information we have about its existence is that Manuel Godoy was its first owner. In the description of the assets of the Godoy Palace made by the engraver Pedro Gonzalez de Sepulveda in 1800 includes: «A [Venus] Goya’s nude but without drawing or grace in color». The work was not visible to visitors. Between myth and reality, it is said that through a modern mechanism the picture of the dressed Maja could be exchanged for the nude Maja, which remained hidden except on special occasions.
Portrait of Doña Josefa Tudó, by José de Madrazo.
In 1813, the inventory of assets seized from Godoy alluded to “the Venuses he painted for the Prince of Peace” and the French Frédéric Quilliet he described them as “Gypsies”. It was later when speculation began that she was the Duchess of Alba or, as she defended the painter Pedro de Madrazo, that her model was Pepita Tudó. Fernando VII would confiscate the painting years later, and in 1815 the Inquisition seized the work for “obscene” and filed a case against Goya to find out the circumstances of its gestation. Even then, one of the greatest enigmas in the history of art was not solved.
The most curious thing about the matter is that the painter from Fuendetodos obtained acquittal from the court at the mercy of Cardinal Luis Maria de Bourbon y Vallabriga, his great protector at the time and who was going to commission masterpieces such as ‘The Charge of the Mamelukes’ or ‘The Third of May 1808’, who, however, his kinship did not invite him to get into those brambles. Her sister was Godoy’s wife, who detested the harem that her husband had set up.
The vague testimony of the painter suggested that it was a “gipsy girl”, the lover of a “dying” monk, who offered to pose for the works and whose striking resemblance to Godoy’s mistress made it advisable to place her in a “reserved camera”. A lot of coincidence would be that resemblance being Godoy himself who commissioned the work…
Recently, the possibility that modern technology could solve the puzzle has been ruled out. “The widely held assumption that Goya had modified the head to hide the true features of the model has been ruled out with the recent X-ray, which shows the body painted once and without appreciable alterations in that area,” warns the file. that accompanies the painting in the Prado Museum.