Nuestra Señora del Pilar

This is early Goya, made around 1769 when he was in his early twenties and still working in his home city of Zaragoza, long before the court and the famous later work. Its subject sat at the heart of the town, Our Lady of the Pillar, the Virgin whom local tradition held had appeared in Zaragoza standing on a pillar of jasper, and whose great riverside basilica the city revolved around. The devotion was almost a family matter for Goya, whose father worked as a gilder on ornament for that same church. Within a few years the young painter would be back decorating one of the basilica's own vaults himself.