Procissão da aldeia

Goya painted this around 1786, a genre scene of a village procession winding out from a country chapel behind its priest and mayor. He described the cast himself, the priest, the mayor, an alderman, a bagpiper and their followers. In the Spain of the time a procession like this was as much a social obligation as an act of devotion, the local worthies obliged to be seen at the front. Goya was in his early forties then, working his way up through royal tapestry designs toward the court appointment he landed in 1789. The mood is still sunlit and good-humoured, the ruined castle on the right balancing the chapel on the left. The dark, haunted processions of flagellants he would paint after his illness were still years off.