Francisco Goya's tapestry cartoons

He returns to his homeland in Aragon and paints the dome and pendentives of the Regina Martyrum of El Pilar, which will bring him into conflict with his brother-in-law Francisco and the town council of Zaragoza.

From the 1730s onwards, the presence of Italians at the Madrid court became more notorious, due to the fact that Philip V's second wife, the Parmesan Isabella de Farnesio, had a great preference for the culture of the Italic Peninsula.

But the king rejected the painters' requests and handed over the management of the workshop to a Fleming named Vandergoten, supposedly a relative of the family that had founded the factory more than six decades earlier.

Critics of the stature of Bozal and Glendinning affirm that it was made in 1789, but Tomlinson rejects this theory and proposes that it was completed before 1788, since the series to which it belonged was left unfinished when Charles III died —on December 14, 1788— and in April 1789 Goya received the longed-for appointment as painter of the chamber, so his activity in the field of cartoons would diminish drastically.

The small reference guide to Goya's works in the Museo del Prado, written by Manuela de Mena, records Blind Man's Bluff as having been painted between 1788–89.

[22] Another of the paintings with doubtful dating is Chicken Fights, which Bozal assumes as part of the seventh series, dedicated to the king's office in El Escorial,[23] as well as the official page of the Prado Museum.

[26] Tapestries are weavings made in a similar way to carpets, which by combining threads of different colors and tones allow, as in a mosaic, to visually recreate real images.

The low-warp looms allow greater speed because it is done on the front side of the piece, and also greatly reduces the cost of the work because they do not match the quality of the tapestries woven in high-warp.

[35] Neoclassicism, so much in vogue during the decades prior to the execution of Goya's first cartoons, was not the most appropriate way to transmit the vivacity of a popular scene, such as those of children playing —who were sometimes aristocrats in disguise, in order to escape from their hieratic existence—.

Maja and Cloaked Men is the most faithful representation —and perhaps a tribute— to the way of being and living of the majos, who a few months earlier had led a revolt against the prohibition of the cape and brimmed hat.

From the same year dates The Injured Mason, which refers to the pain and suffering of the lower class, but at the same time alludes to a decree issued by the king protecting artisans from the misfortunes that could befall them.

The academicist rigidity, used especially in mythological and historical subjects —like Tiepolo's works—, was combined with the delicate and fine rococo art to give rise to some of Goya's most famous cartoons.

The main features of rococo that can be admired in Goya are: vivacity, immediacy, curiosity, chromatism of soft pinks, gauzy textures in the skirts of the women, a luminous background landscape, etc.

Tomlinson and Baticle point out as prototype of the painting the works The Concert, by Boucher, and the engraving Près de vous belle Iris by Lancret, by Horthmals, of which a print is preserved in the Royal Palace of Madrid that could have been studied by Goya.

Other feasible hypotheses point to the influence of The Finding of Moses, by Charles de La Fosse and The Wild Boar Hunt, a fine allegory of Europe by Joseph Parrocel; in both the detail of the umbrella appears.

The Swing and The Young Bull could represent a passage written by Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, Leandro's father, in his clandestine poem Arte de las putas: Let the diestro flee from such an accursed custom always give the hurgonazo in passing to Cándido inciting, the great bullfighter who, by the prompt, is clean his thrust Regarding the largest painting of the last series, The Wedding, Bozal explains the particular transition from the rococo that impregnated most of the cartoons to an accentuated neoclassicism, which Goya would bring to its peak at the dawn of the 19th century.

The Woodcutters and Majo with Guitar respond to similar works by Zacarías González Velázquez and Ramón Bayeu, although the latter showed a greater superiority to Goya in his composition.

The egregious figure of Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, from whom Goya would have been able to study some works owned by the Royal House, is the strongest influence of Spanish art in his cartoons, especially in technique.

[54] In almost all the cartoons of the third and fourth series Goya applies a technique with strong colors and a large spotlight placed in the center of the painting, as Velázquez did in his younger years.

[55] The river of The Tobacco Guards uses a brushstroke identical to the one used by the Sevillian, while the still lifes and tiles of The Pottery Vendor underlie a tribute to the painter and his Christ in the House of Martha and Mary.

[56] On the other hand, the portrait that appears in the background of The Fair of Madrid evokes an unquestionable Velázquez style, and the distribution of figures, as well as the brownish tones of A Stickball Game, once again remind us of the master from Seville.

[60] Maja and Cloaked Men, from the second series, is a direct precedent of some of the most characteristic scenes of the etchings of Los caprichos, where the game of love and jealousy becomes the argumentative center of the composition.

The second series of cartoons consists of Picnic on the Banks of the Manzanares, Dance of San Antonio de la Florida, An Avenue in Andalusia, The Parasol, The Kite, The Drinker, Quarrel in the New Tavern,[72] Boys Picking Fruit and Children Blowing up a Bladder.

[75] Bozal and other authors specialising in Goya's painting consider The Parasol to be the most successful work in this series, as it combines the pyramidal art of Neoclassicism with the chromatic effects of the emerging galant style.

The east and west walls would be decorated with The Pottery Vendor and The Fair of Madrid, the largest panels in the series, and also with the overdoors Children in a Chariot and Boys Playing Soldiers.

The conflict led to the return of The Blind Guitarist, and Goya found the solution by painting A Stickball Game, which was to be hung in the bedroom and thus form part of the fourth series.

It should be recalled that the poor reputation of these workers had been a recurring theme in 18th-century literature and that in 1790 a royal decree prevented the washerwomen of the Manzanares from addressing middle-class citizens.

It is unheard of that such a puritanical monarch as Charles III —who tried to destroy the Hapsburg nude collection— could have allowed such a strong sexual message to remain in his palace, but most authors believe that this was because few realised the true meaning of the painting.

And on 20 April 1790 the court painters received a communiqué stating that "the King has agreed to determine the rural and jocular scenes, which he wants to be represented in the tapestries".

The fact that this is a cheerful facet of Spanish society does not exempt the paintings from fierce criticism of the government, although Goya's position means that he has to disguise it in order to prevent his emoluments from diminishing.