The Duchess of Alba and la Beata Beata" is considered to form part of Goya's "caprichos", and was painted shortly after he fell deaf. It is signed "Goya in 1795" in the lower right corner. It is in the collection of the Museo del Prado, Madrid, having been acquired from a private collection. Goya portrayed María Cayetana de Silva a number of other times, notably "The White Duchess" of the same year and the 1797 "Portrait of the Duchess of Alba". The Duchess of Alba and la Beata The Duchess of Alba and "la Beata" (or The Duchess of Alba and the Pious Woman; Spanish: La duquesa
Claire de Duras Claire de Duras Claire, Duchess of Duras (née de Kersaint; 1777–1828) was a French writer best known for her 1823 novel called "Ourika", which examines issues of racial and sexual equality, and which inspired the 1969 John Fowles novel "The French Lieutenant's Woman". Claire de Duras left her native France for London during the French Revolution in 1789, and returned to France in 1808 as the Duchess of Duras. She maintained a famous literary salon in post-Revolutionary Paris and was the close friend of Chateaubriand, who she had met while in exile in London, and who helped her to publish