Pepita Tudó
Josefa Petra Francisca de Paula de Tudó y Catalán, Alemany y Luesia (Cádiz, May 19, 1779-Madrid, September 7, 1869), better known as Pepita Tudó or Josefina Tudó, was princess of Bassano, as wife of Manuel Godoy, and I countess of Castillo Fiel and I viscountess of Rocafuerte, by appointment of Carlos IV. He is famous for his long coexistence with Godoy, as well as for the fact that he established himself without any documentary or other support that could have served as a model for Francisco de Goya for the creation of his two "majas", La maja dressed and The naked maja.
Biography
Josefa Tudó was the daughter of Antonio de Tudó y Alemany, and his wife Catalina de Catalán y Luesia, and sister of María Magdalena and María del Socorro, future Marchioness of Stefanoni.
His father, an artillery captain in Cádiz, had been named brigadier and second lieutenant of the Corps Guard in Madrid in 1795, becoming mayor of the Buen Retiro Palace in the capital in 1797, where he died shortly later.
Apparently, after his death, the four women began to live under the protection of Manuel Godoy, to whom Catalina had gone to claim certain arrears of her widowhood payments.
Be that as it may, Pepita was already Godoy's lover in 1800. The queen, however, forced him to marry María Teresa de Borbón y Vallabriga, XV Countess of Chinchón and I Marchioness of Boadilla del Monte, a marriage that, on the other hand, favors both spouses: Godoy, economically, and María Teresa, who thanks to him recovers the Borbón surname for herself, her siblings and her descendants.
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos, on the occasion of the meal that Godoy offers him in the Grimaldi palace for having been appointed Minister of Grace and Justice, notes the impression he had upon seeing the two women sitting at the table, wife and mistress, one on each side of the prime minister:
On her right side, the princess; on her left, Pepita Tudó. This show ends in my puzzle. My soul couldn't suffer. I didn't eat, I didn't talk, I couldn't hold my spirit. I ran from there.
Her influence at court took a decisive step when, on July 14, 1807, at the request of Godoy and the queen, Charles IV granted her the titles of Countess of Castillo Fiel and Viscountess of Rocafuerte.
- Exile and later life
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Before May 2, 1808, the kings had already left Spain. Pepita Tudó and Godoy will do it later. His wife, however, leaves alone for Paris.
On January 7, 1829, after the countess died three months earlier, they married in Rome (it seems that on July 22, 1797 they had celebrated a secret wedding in the El Pardo chapel). They had had two children: Manuel Luis (Madrid, March 29, 1805-August 24, 1871) and Luis Carlos (1807-Pisa (Italy), 1818). In 1832, Tudó seems to convince Godoy that the best thing they can do to escape the harassment of Ferdinand VII is to leave Rome and move to Paris.
As general administrator of her husband's assets, Josefa soon acquired sumptuous properties, jewels valued at more than four million francs, as well as applying for bank loans (one of 600,000 francs had been guaranteed with part of the jewelry from friends who are refugees in France). The debts, therefore, did not take long to arrive, forcing Godoy to pawn paintings and, later, his properties both in Rome and in France. Two years later, in 1834, Tudó returned to Madrid, apparently with the aim of rehabilitating Godoy's political image and recovering the assets confiscated by Fernando VII, who died that same year.
- Death and burial site
Josefa Tudó died in her home at 22 Fuencarral Street in Madrid, on September 7, 1869, at the age of 90, a victim of burns caused by a brazier that accidentally lit her clothes. She was buried in the San Isidro Cemetery, in the niche located in the upper row of gallery No. 4 (the sixth from the left), in the courtyard of the Purísima Concepción:
EXCMA.SRA DA JOSEFA TUDO
R. I. P.
And CYTYLYN.
_
PRINCY VIUDA DE LA PAZ y DE BASSANO.
DUQUESA VIUDA DE LA ALCUDIA,
ANTIGUA DAMA DE LA REINA
AND THE MYRIY LUISA ORDER.
_
At 92 [sic] YEARS OF EDAD.
Powers
| Predecessor: Creation by Charles IV in 1807 |  County of Castillo Fiel (1807-1869) | Successor: Manuel Luis de Godoy de Bassano y Tudó (1869-1871) |
| Predecessor: Creation by Charles IV in 1807 |  Visigoth of Rocafuerte (1807-1869) | Successor: Manuel Luis de Godoy de Bassano y Tudó (1869-1871) |
Data on its possible representation in Goya's La Maja Naked and La Maja Vestido
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c. 1797-1800.
In 1872 (Descriptive and historical catalog of the Prado Museum), Pedro de Madrazo y Kuntz, son of the painter and former director of the art gallery José de Madrazo, simply said that the character painted by Goya —«[…] already with the clothes stuck to the flesh […] now without any clothes and in the simple attire of Eve in the Earthly Paradise…»— «[…] there were those who said it was the portrait of a great lady from the court of María Luisa, well known for her gallant and romantic life [sic], which distinguished the painter with her intimacy: a malicious assumption, refuted by the authentic portraits of that lady" (the Duchess of Alba), to affirm almost immediately that there was no shortage of people who found out that «[…] the funny girl was the friend of a certain guy who, due to the character he had (Manuel Godoy), "He should have refrained from such an outrage" (Pepita Tudó, who died a year earlier). In any case, Madrazo's ambiguous indications went completely unnoticed by those interested in Goya's life.
Pepita could have already been Godoy's lover at the time the paintings were commissioned, and it is known with certainty that he was the first owner of the works (in 1808 they are registered among his assets as Gitanas).
On March 16, 1815, the so-called "Secret Chamber of the Inquisition", reestablished by Ferdinand VII after his return from exile in France, ordered the artist to appear to tell them who the model had been and who had commissioned him. the paintings, but Goya's response is unknown, or if it even occurred (apparently, the matter was definitively settled thanks to the intervention of Cardinal Luis María de Borbón y Vallabriga, with the only exception that The naked maja, which had been described as "obscene" by the Holy Office, was never exposed to the public).
According to other authors, the painter claimed that she was a "gypsy girl", lover of a "dying" monk, who was executed for killing the young woman during a fit of jealousy, who offered to pose for the works. and whose striking resemblance to Godoy's lover made its placement in a "reserved chamber" advisable.
In 1843, the French writer Louis Viardot, who had seen The Dressed Maja at the Royal Academy of San Fernando, says that (in 1802) "they believed it represented the Duchess of Alba." It will be the also French Charles Yriarte (Goya: sa biographie, les fresques, les toiles, les tapisseries, les eaux-fortes et le catalogue de l'oeuvre; 1867) who first alerts about the total dissimilarity between both women, taking into account, furthermore, that, when Goya painted The Naked Maja around 1800, María Teresa was already almost forty years old and very ill; and that, when she finished The Maja Dressed around 1805, she had already died.
However, the possibility that the Duchess had intervened in the execution of the works continued to seduce many admirers of the artist and scholars of the art world to the point that, on April 17, 1945, the then Duke of Alba, Luis Martínez de Irujo, ordered the exhumation of the remains of his famous ancestor with the intention of demonstrating that, indeed, neither her anatomical structure nor her age corresponded in any way to those of La maja naked.
Thus, after the report prepared by the three doctors who carried out the exhumation of the body and subsequent autopsy, the conclusion was reached, among others, that the aristocrat suffered from a serious deformation of the spinal column (scoliosis) towards the right side, which caused a notable elevation of the shoulder on the same side, which, evidently, had nothing to do with the figure of the young model.
It had also been ensured that, beneath the face that appears today, there was an image of the duchess, repainted years later. But the x-rays carried out in 1945 by the technical documentation office of the Prado Museum demonstrated once again that, despite the striking nature of the hypothesis, there was no figure underneath and, consequently, the head of La Maja Naked was always the same.
More item. As Artur Lundkvist highlights in his work, both the naked and the clothed "maja" present two morphological peculiarities that make them, without a doubt, clearly recognizable: the excessive separation between the breasts (intermammary canal that is too wide and consequent deformation, above all, on the left) and the abnormal disproportion between the size and the length of the legs, shorter than what would correspond according to the first:
[...] perhaps the woman was a bit deformed—the twisted hip and the thighs too short—, flaws that the artist has reproduced relentlessly.
María Teresa, on the other hand, seems to have been more “slender” than most. So much so that, when her remains were transferred to the Sacramental of San Isidro in 1843, it was discovered that at least one foot had been dismembered from the rest of her body, most likely because it did not fit in the coffin..
Josefa Tudó in popular culture
Cinema
| Original title | Premiere date | Country | Director | Like Francisco de Goya | Like Pepita Tudo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Naked Maja | 20 Dec. 1958 |  Italy | Henry Coster | Anthony Francious | Ivana Kislinger |
| Volavérunt | 1 Oct. 1999 |  Spain | Big Moon | Jorge Perugorría | Penelope Cruz |
| Goya in Bordeaux | 12 Nov. 1999 | Spain | Carlos Saura | Francisco Rabal | Cristina Espinosa |
Theatre
- Gaspar and Rimbau, Enrique (1901). The Tudo.[1]
- Palencia Álvarez, Ceferino (1901). Pepita Tudo.