Three figures enjoy tobacco in an expressive manner in the foreground while an onlooker leans through the window. Around a table in the background, another group of figures drinks or plays cards. This is an example of scenes inside taverns with smokers, drinkers and players, which Teniers made during the sixteen thirties. He began with figures by his teacher, Adriaen Brouwer (1605/1606-1638), whic
Of the artists who painted war scenes in the 17th century, none was as interested as David Teniers II in capturing images from behind the lines. With his customary tactile rigor, he depicts a plethora of military objects lying in the foreground with no apparent order and a handful of figures hanging cuirasses or helping their colleagues to remove their footgear. At the same time, he draws on one o
The foreground display of numerous military elements, banners, drums, cuirasses and weapons, leads to a genre painting showing some soldiers resting in the background. On the left of the composition, one of the pages works to hang up the soldiers' clothes. Here, as in his other works, Teniers shows his capacity to use light to achieve a perfect representation of the qualities of the objects depict
Elegantly dressed nobles with swords, capes and sunshades join the lower-class majos and majas on the banks of the river Manzanares and indulge in gambling, dancing and fishing. This is a sketch for a cartoon for a tapestry to decorate the apartments of the Prince and Princess of Asturias at the Palace of El Pardo.
Pareja de la obra El sacamuelas (P7945) y pintado en el mismo año de 1844, presenta una clara relación con la obra homónima de Velázquez, que Alenza conoció en el Museo del Prado. En este lienzo, de todos modos, se resaltan mucho más los extremos de la embriaguez y el carácter burlesco de los personajes. La pintura revela un sentido abiertamente popular y jocoso. En el interior abovedado de una ta
In the foreground of this canvas, a figure dressed in green holds in his hands what appears to be a pack of cards and looks directly at the viewer, as if to invite us to participate in the game. He is in the countryside, seated under the protection of a rocky crag. Behind him is a landscape that ends in a range of mountains on the horizon. Velázquez painted the portrait around 1638, and it
The doubts that existed regarding the dating of this work were increased when the sitter was identified. He is documented from 1544 in the accounts of Prince Philip (later Philip II) as Pero Hernández de la Cruz, known as Perejón, one of the two ‘Pericos’ whose role at Court was to amuse the prince. The inventory of the Alcázar in Madrid of 1636 confirms this identification th
This work is part of the series of six panels of monkey scenes in the Museo Nacional del Prado (from P01805 to P01810). The subject matter has been associated with human foolishness since the Middle Ages and is drawn from the oeuvre of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Peter van der Borcht. Teniers successfully captures the ambivalence of mankind in its animal nature. A group plays cards in the foreg
This work belongs to the so-called peasant interiors, one of the new genres of painting that emerged and developed in the Netherlandsin the early seventeenth century. In Houbraken and in early inventories they are described as een boertje, (a little peasant) or as toeback rookerchen (tobacco smokers). The consolidation and appreciation of this genre was fostered by the satirical and moralising lit
A cartoon for the tapestry to be hung in the Prince of Asturias´s quarters at the El Pardo Palace. Two Majos appear at the center of the composition, playing characteristic 18th-century Spanish narrow-wasted popular guitars with five double strings (as indicated by their ten visible tuning pegs). Baroque guitars had five double strings, but around 1760 another pair was added, although both t
This work is part of the series of six panels of monkey scenes in the Museo Nacional del Prado (from P01805 to P01810). The subject matter has been associated with human foolishness since the Middle Ages and is drawn from the oeuvre of Pieter Brueghel the Elder and Peter van der Borcht. Teniers successfully captures the ambivalence of mankind in its animal nature. Four apes are smoking around a ta
This tapestry cartoon represents a quarrel among men in front of a tavern which Goya calls the New Tavern. The area near Madrid now called “Ventas,” and tknown as “Ventas del Espíritu Santo” in Goya´s time, was frequented by muleteers, caleche drivers, troublemakers and gamblers, as Goya illustrates here. The cards thrown on the table seem to be the origin of the dispute. The subject recall
In this moral work, the triumph of Death over mundane things is symbolized by a large army of skeletons razing the Earth. The background is a barren landscape in which scenes of destruction are still taking place. In the foreground, Death leads his armies from his reddish horse, destroying the world of the living. The latter are led to an enormous coffin with no hope for salvation. All of the soci
A group of Majos play cards in the country, under the shade of an awning hung in a tree. Behind them, another Majo makes signs to his companion, helping him with the game. Goya uses a new and very rich tecnique here, bringing out the contrasting lights and shadows so as to accentuate the strong realism of this cheating scene. The subject has numerous antecedents in European visual culture. This is
Visio Tondalii fue el título de un poema anónimo del siglo XII de contenido moralizante, impreso en Amberes en 1482, que es considerado como una de las fuentes literarias de la obra de El Bosco.
This print is part of a series published by the Company for the engraving of paintings from the Royal Palaces, although it was only published after that institution was no longer active. The Company for the engraving of the paintings from the Royal Palaces was one of the Spanish Enlightenment’s major undertakings during the second half of the 18th century. It supervised the reproduction of prints