The Greasy Pole

Goya painted this around 1787, when he was climbing fast at the Spanish court and taking private commissions on the side. It belongs to a set of seven small pictures made for the Duchess of Osuna, one of the most cultured aristocrats in Madrid, to decorate her country house on the edge of the city. The subject is a village game, the cucaña, in which young men try to shin up a tall pole rubbed with grease or soap to grab a prize tied at the top. Goya makes the whole picture tall and narrow so the pole leans right across it, bending under the weight of the climbers. One boy has almost reached the prize while others slide helplessly back down, and a small crowd waits below to watch him drop.