I giocatori di carte

Before Goya became the dark, haunted painter most people picture, he spent years turning out cheerful designs for the royal tapestry works in Madrid. This is one of them, made in 1777 as a full-size cartoon that weavers would copy thread by thread into a tapestry for the dining room of the Prince of Asturias, the future King Charles the Fourth. It shows a group of majos — flashy young men of the Madrid streets — playing cards out in the open country under an awning slung from a tree. Look behind the players and you catch the trick: one man is signalling the hands to his partner. Card sharps were an old subject, but setting them outdoors in bright daylight was Goya's own idea. The canvas was thought lost until it turned up in a Prado basement in 1869.