Cacciatore con i suoi cani

This is close to where Goya's royal career began. In 1775, not yet 30, he came to Madrid and took his first large commission for the crown: designs to be woven into tapestries for the Escorial palace, for the dining room of the prince who would become Carlos IV. The theme was hunting, a Bourbon passion, and Goya turned out a whole set. Here a hunter stands with his back to us, gun on his shoulder, holding back two eager dogs on a leash, a slim tree curving up beside him to fit the tall narrow panel. There is no drama, just a man and his animals in open country. Goya would spend years on cartoons like this before the court saw how good he was. The finished tapestries once hung on Escorial walls, and the paintings behind them turned up in a palace basement a century later.