Dead hares

In 1808 Napoleon's soldiers poured into Spain, and that May the people of Madrid rose against them and were cut down in the streets, beginning six years of war. Goya, first painter to the Spanish court, lived through all of it in the city. Around those years he made about a dozen small still lifes, each the same modest size, of dead game and butchered meat. This one lays two hares on a bare ledge, the fur still warm in colour, the bodies gone limp. He kept these pictures in his own house and never showed them. What holds you is the attention: he studied the dead animals with the same searching eye he gave his living sitters, the slack weight, the sheen of fur already dulling.