Maria Luisa Caterina Cecilia Cosway (1759–1838)   

• Was an Italian-English painter, musician, and educator.
• Née Hadfield, born in Florence.
• She worked in England, France, and later Italy.
• She exhibited at the Royal Academy of Arts, and commissioned the first portrait of Napoleon to be seen in England.
• Her paintings and engravings are held by the British Museum, the British Library, and the New York Public Library.
• Cosway was an accomplished composer, musician, and society hostess with her husband, painter Richard Cosway.
• She had a brief romantic relationship with widowed American statesman Thomas Jefferson in 1786, the pair kept up a correspondence until his death in 1826. 

• Cosway founded a girls' school in Lyon, which she directed from 1803 to 1809.

• She founded a girls' college and school in Lodi, northern Italy, which she directed until her death.

• She bequeathed the school to the Catholic Institute of the "English Ladies", a branch of the religious Order founded by Mary Ward, now seat of the "Fondazione Maria Cosway".

• She was made a Baroness of the Austrian Empire in 1834.

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