Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) whose full-length portrait appears in the same series. As with the other "Black Paintings", Goya began with a black background which he painted over with lighter pigments, then with broad, heavy brushstrokes of grey, blue and brown. The darker areas were achieved by leaving the black under-paint exposed; this is most obvious in the figure of the Devil. Like the other works in the series, "Witches' Sabbath" is worked up through heavy, slashing brushstrokes. The plaster was underlaid with thick carbon black before the paint was applied in hues of white lead, Prussian blue, vermilion of mercury, and crystals 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