María Josefa Pimentel, Duchess of Osuna who became patrons of the painter Francisco de Goya. The Duchess not only purchased one of the first editions of "Los Caprichos", but also commissioned a series of cabinet paintings on the subject of witchcraft from Goya, amongst them "El aquelarre" ("Witches' Sabbath"). In the famous portrait Goya painted of her, she is shown standing with noble reserve, and dressed according to the fashion initiated by Queen Marie Antoinette in Paris at that time. In another famous painting, Goya portrayed the ducal family. The Duchess was interested in landscape gardening and from the 1780s she developed a garden at El
Witches' Sabbath (Goya, 1798) "Witches' Sabbath" shows the devil in the form of a garlanded goat, surrounded by a coven of disfigured, young and aging witches in a moonlit barren landscape. The goat possesses large horns and is crowned by a wreath of oak leaves. An old witch holds an infant in her hands. The devil seems to be acting as priest at an initiation ceremony for the child, though popular superstition at the time believed the devil often fed on children and human fetuses. The skeletons of two infants can be seen; one discarded to the left, the other held by a crone