Majo with a Guitar

This is not really a finished painting but a full-scale pattern, a cartoon Goya made so that weavers at the royal tapestry factory could copy it thread by thread. The finished tapestry was destined for a doorway in the private apartments of the heir to the Spanish throne, the future Carlos the Fourth, at the El Pardo palace outside Madrid. Goya described the scene himself: a man sits singing with his guitar while two people behind him listen and another stands off in the distance. What stays with you is the mood. The majo plays up to the sky with a melancholy air, and the figures around him seem to turn away, ignoring the song. Goya presented it in January 1780, still years from the court fame that was coming.