El tío Paquete

Around 1820 Goya was in his mid-seventies, stone deaf for decades, and painting the nightmarish murals we now call the Black Paintings on the walls of his house outside Madrid. In the same years he made this portrait of a man Madrid knew well. Tío Paquete was a blind beggar who sat on the steps of the church of San Felipe el Real, singing and playing his guitar for coins. Goya gives him almost nothing but a face, looming out of the dark, built from thick loaded strokes of paint. The eyes show through nearly shut lids, and the mouth is open in a wide, near-toothless grin. An old inscription on the back of the canvas once called him the famous blind man of the neighbourhood.