The Spanish painter Antonio Pereda married Doña Maria de Bustamente, a
woman of some rank, and greater pretension, who would associate only
with people of high fashion, and insisted on having a duenna in constant
waiting in her antechamber, like a lady of quality. Pereda was not rich
enough to maintain such an attendant; he therefore compromised matters
by painting on a screen an old lady sitting at her needle, with
spectacles on her nose, and so truthfully executed that visitors were
wont to salute her as they passed, taking her for a real duenna, too
deaf or too discreet to notice their entrance!