The wedding

Goya made this in 1792 as a design for a tapestry, one of a set meant to hang in the king's study at the Escorial palace. Because it was a full-scale pattern for the weavers, it is big, almost 13 feet wide. But look past the sunny holiday colors and there is a sharp joke in it. A wedding party spills out through a stone arch, and the bride, young and pretty, has been married off to a plain, older, well-off man. Her father trails behind with a look of tired satisfaction. Goya was needling the arranged marriages of convenience of his day, when a family might trade a daughter for money or standing. Down in the foreground a small boy clambers on an old cannon, paying the solemn couple no attention at all.