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.
Leonardo Alenza y Nieto was, without doubt, the painter par excellence of romantic costumbrismo from Madrid. (Costumbrismo refers to nineteenth-century genre scenes representing folkloric subjects and local customs.) Alenza is traditionally considered a follower of Goya for the application of his sharp, honest skills of observation to the least favoured social classes in the Spain of his era, at t
Ramón Bayeu, the younger brother of Francisco Bayeu, received similar training to his brother and won first prize in a competition organised by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1766. Beginning in 1775, he worked under the direction of his brother, producing cartoons for tapestries with genre scenes for the Royal Tapestry Manufactory. A skilful painter of frescoes, he was em
This is a sketch of the fresco that Corrado Giaquinto painted in the former stairway at the Madrid’s Royal Palace, which is now the Hall of Columns. That fresco, his last work at the Royal Palace, is undoubtedly one of the finest paintings from Giaquinto’s Spanish period.He concluded it in 1762, so the sketch presented here must have been made slightly earlier. At the top is the figure of Apollo,
The six musician angels (triangle, harp, flute, castanets, a type of violin and a tambourine) decorated the doors of a tabernacle. Despite the chromatic variety, the choice of a cool palette produces a technical result close to grisaille. This dissonant, almost Mannerist effect combined with the expressionistic physical types and the rather sketchy treatment of the figures is characteristic of Ped
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
En el centro de la composición, un músico sentado tocando una guitarra de tipología francesa y unas figuras danzando refuerzan el carácter festivo de la representación. Detrás del guitarrista hay una figura masculina con las palmas de las manos abiertas hacia el espectador que podría estar cantando algún palo flamenco. La mujer con vestimenta en tonos rosas danza apoyando el pie derecho sobre la p
A preparatory drawing for Disparates, 4, Big Booby. The big booby was an intellectually challenged giant who danced licentiously to the sound of the castanets at carnivals. In this drawing, he frightens a clergyman who hides behind a manikin or devotional image. In the print (G02172), however, Goya has set the scene at night, discarding the frightened figure’s religious clothing, softening the gia
Bordeaux Sketchbook [H], sheet 61. Like other modern titles for the drawings in Sketchbook H, which provide a generic gloss of a scene without interpreting Goya’s intended meaning, the title here does not fully capture the sheet’s content: a Carthusian monk dancing with castanets. Almost all traditional Spanish dances, such as flamenco or the jota, were performed to the sound of these instruments
Disparates, 4, Big Booby. The big booby was an intellectually challenged giant who danced licentiously to the sound of the castanets at carnivals. In this drawing, he frightens a clergyman who hides behind a manikin or devotional image. In the print (G02172), however, Goya has set the scene at night, discarding the frightened figure’s religious clothing, softening the giant’s face and providing hi
Disparates, 4, Big Booby. The big booby was an intellectually challenged giant who danced licentiously to the sound of the castanets at carnivals. In this drawing, he frightens a clergyman who hides behind a manikin or devotional image. In the print (G02172), however, Goya has set the scene at night, discarding the frightened figure’s religious clothing, softening the giant’s face and providing hi