La cattura di Cristo

This is Goya's rapid oil sketch for a large altarpiece in the sacristy of Toledo Cathedral, the finished version of which he delivered in 1798. It shows the moment soldiers seize Christ by torchlight to begin his Passion, and the study is done at furious speed, the paint slashed on in a few dark strokes with torch-glare breaking over the crowd. By this point Goya had been completely deaf for about five years and was working at his most daring, the same stretch in which he made the biting Caprichos prints. The Prado keeps this quick study while the altarpiece itself still hangs in Toledo. You can watch him thinking with the brush, settling where the light would fall before he ever touched the big canvas.