L'Attaque de brigands

In the winter of 1792 Goya fell gravely ill while travelling near Cadiz in the south of Spain, an illness that left him deaf for the rest of his life. As he recovered he painted a set of small pictures on sheets of tin, no larger than a page, done for himself rather than for any patron. This is one of them. On a bare, rocky road four bandits have stopped a coach. One stabs a fallen traveller, another levels a gun at a man kneeling and begging for his life, and bodies lie scattered across the ground. Highway robbery was a real danger in the mountains of southern Spain then, common enough that Goya had already painted the subject once, in a version made for the Duchess of Osuna. These he made with no commission at all, working on metal because it took his quick, loaded brush.