ブランコ(1787年)

By the late 1780s Goya had found the patrons who suited him best, the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, among the most cultured aristocrats in Spain, who hired him to decorate their country estate outside Madrid, a landscaped retreat they called El Capricho, the whim. This was one of seven scenes he supplied for it, around 1787. A young woman in fashionable dress sits on a plank swing slung between two trees while companions push and steady her. There is a small social game hidden in the clothes. It was the height of fashion for the Madrid upper class to dress down as majos and majas, the flashy working people of the city, and it has long been suggested that the woman on the swing is the Duchess of Osuna herself, playing at being someone humbler. The whole commission cost the Osunas 2,500 reales.