Gudrun Maurer, curator in the Department of Eighteenth-Century Painting and Goya at the Museo Nacional del Prado, discusses The Snowstorm, or Winter (1786) by Francisco de Goya.

Winter is described—setting aside mythological tradition—as a contemporary winter landscape in which a fierce gale further hinders the progress of the figures. Three men, on the right—two dressed in the humble attire typical of Castile and another, in the background, wearing Valencian dress—press on, sheltering beneath Zamoran blankets. In the foreground, a dog pauses fearfully, tail between its legs, at the encounter between its masters and two figures dressed in finer jackets and coats, resembling the stewards of a wealthy household. One of them, at the front, is armed with a shotgun, while the other leads a mule laden with a pig already slit open and prepared for slaughter.