The soldier and the lady

In the 1770s Goya was not yet the court's great painter. He was a young Aragonese supplying full-size colour designs to the royal tapestry works in Madrid, which weavers then copied thread by thread. This one was delivered early in 1779 for the bedroom of the prince and princess who would become Carlos IV and Maria Luisa, meant to hang in a narrow strip of wall, which is why it is so tall and thin. It shows a fashionable Madrid woman in a yellow bodice led by the hand by a soldier, with two more figures watching from behind a garden wall. Goya filled these cartoons with the street types of the city, the sort of people who would never enter a royal bedroom except as decoration.