Der Stierkampf

In the late 1770s Goya was not yet the dark, haunted painter most people picture. He was a young supplier to the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid, turning out large oil designs that weavers would copy thread by thread into wool for the walls of royal palaces. Around 1779 the bullfight gave him a subject he genuinely loved, and he later liked to sign letters to a close friend as Francisco de los Toros, Francisco of the Bulls. Here the crowd, the ring, and the bright afternoon are worked up at the scale a tapestry needed, every figure kept clear enough to survive being rewoven. Scenes like this were meant to show a king the ordinary pastimes of his Spanish subjects.