酒を飲む男

In 1777 Goya was 31 and a long way from the dark, haunted work of his old age. He was designing cartoons, full-size painted models, for the Royal Tapestry Factory in Madrid, which wove them into hangings for the royal palaces. This one was meant to sit above a door in a dining room at El Escorial, which is why the drinker is seen from below, his figure rising against an open blue sky. He tips back a Catalan wineskin while companions loll around him. The subject carries an old moralising note about the fleeting pleasures of drink, but Goya plays it lightly, as a scene of ordinary Madrid life. It belongs to a series of tapestry cartoons he turned out through the late 1770s, his first steady work for the crown.