The Strolling Players

In 1793 Goya was recovering from an illness that had nearly killed him and left him permanently deaf. Cut off from easy conversation, he turned to a set of small pictures on tinplate, painted for himself rather than for a patron, and later showed them to the Academy in Madrid as scenes of 'national pastimes.' This is one of them. A troupe of traveling players performs a comedy on a rough outdoor stage, the stock figures of the Italian commedia dell'arte, Harlequin balancing cups while a portly Pantalone watches in his white wig. The support is a tin sheet barely larger than a page. He was 47, and this is among the first works he made after the silence closed in.