María Cayetana de Silva, 13th Duchess of Alba the House of Osuna. The Duchess' relationship with famed Spanish painter Francisco Goya and her somewhat eccentric personality have contributed greatly to a continuing interest in her life during the two centuries since her death. Goya executed several well-known portraits of the duchess, most of them during his stay at Sanlúcar de Barrameda (one of the Andalusian country seats of the House of Medina-Sidonia), shortly after the death of her husband, the Duke of Alba, who was also Duke of Medina Sidonia, in 1796. Goya's accompaniment of the recently widowed Duchess combined with certain innuendo expressed in his portraits of
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