Blind Man's Bluff (sketch)

In 1788 Goya was put to work on a set of tapestries for the bedroom of the infantas at the palace of El Pardo, and he tried his ideas out first in small oils like this one, 41 by 44 centimetres. Carlos III died that December and the series was left unfinished. This is the only sketch from it that Goya went on to turn into a full-size cartoon. The game is blind man's buff, la gallina ciega in Spanish, also called the spoon game, because the blindfolded man gropes at the ring with a wooden spoon. Set the sketch next to the cartoon and figures have gone from it, a crowd on the far bank of the river and a woman standing outside the circle. Specialists have argued for 1788 and for 1789, and the museum's guide prints both. The canvas stayed in private hands and reached the Prado in 1931, bequeathed by the collector Pedro Fernández Durán.