Majas on the Balcony

Two young women in Madrid dress lean on a balcony rail, lit bright against the shadow, while behind them two men in dark cloaks and hats stand half in the gloom, watching the street below. The type is one that turns up again in this period, the majas, fashionable working-class women of Madrid, painted around the years Napoleon's army occupied Spain. The contrast is deliberate: the women open and gleaming, the men behind them closed and faintly menacing. There is more than one version of this composition, and scholars have long argued over which came from Goya's own hand and which from someone close to him. The picture keeps its hold either way, largely through those two shadowed figures who never quite come into the light.