Die Schaukel (1791)

This is a full-size painting, but it was never meant to be admired as one. Goya made it as a cartoon, a template for weavers at the royal tapestry factory in Madrid to copy thread by thread into a hanging for a royal residence. It shows children balancing on a see-saw improvised from two crossed logs, one child at each end and a third crying in front. It belongs to the last set of these he ever made, in 1791 and 1792. Soon afterwards a severe illness left Goya permanently deaf and turned his art darker and stranger. The cartoon vanished for generations and only resurfaced in 1975, when it was given to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.