O Verão

In 1786 Goya had a steady, slightly unglamorous job. He was supplying the royal tapestry works in Madrid with full-scale painted designs the weavers would copy thread by thread, and this was the largest he ever made, over six metres across. It was meant for the dining room of the prince and princess who would soon be king and queen of Spain, so the season he chose to stand for summer is a harvest, workers resting in the heat with the cut grain and a cart behind them. Because the picture was only a working pattern for wool, nobody treated it as art. It was rolled up and forgotten in a palace basement, and only turned up again in 1869, when it was pulled out and sent to the Prado.