Francisco de Goya

Four characters hold off the charge of a bull using a basket (preparatory drawing).

Clasificación
Four characters hold off the charge of a bull using a basket (preparatory drawing).
Datos Generales
Cronología
Ca. 1814 - 1816
Ubicación
The Prado National Museum. Madrid, Madrid, Spain
Dimensiones
176 x 288 mm
Técnica y soporte
Sanguine on laid paper
Reconocimiento de la autoría de Goya
Documented work
Titular
El Prado National Museum
Ficha: realización/revisión
03 Oct 2021 / 22 Jun 2023
Inventario
(D4357 r.)
Otros títulos:


Inscripciones

unpublished (in pencil, top left)

unpublished (in pencil, bottom right)

20 (in pencil, bottom left corner)

12 (in red pencil, reverse side, bottom)

Historia

See How the ancient Spaniards hunted bulls on horseback in the countryside.

This preparatory drawing passed by inheritance in 1828 to Javier Goya, the painter's son, and in 1854 to Mariano Goya y Goicoechea, the artist's grandson. It was subsequently owned by Valentín Carderera (ca. 1861) and Mariano Carderera (1880). In 1886 it was acquired from Mariano Carderera, along with many other drawings by Goya, including almost all the preparatory studies for the Bullfight, by the Directorate General of Public Instruction, and was assigned to the Prado Museum, where it entered on 12 November 1886.

Análisis artístico

See How the ancient Spaniards hunted bulls on horseback in the countryside.

Preparatory drawing for a print of bullfighting which was never engraved, or at least of which neither the plate nor any proof of condition has survived. It is on the reverse of another preparatory drawing of the series: The Moors established in Spain, dispensing with the superstitions of their Alcoran, adopted this hunting and art, and they throw a bull in the field.

The scene, of great plastic dynamism, shows us a very original and curious type of popular bullfighting that was and still is practised in some villages along the banks of the Ebro river in Zaragoza, such as El Burgo and Fuentes de Ebro, in which a group of young men standing in line face the powerful onslaught of a steer or bull, protected only by a basket with a stick pierced through the handles, known as a roscadero. As we can see, the memory of Aragonese bullfighting traditions lived on in Goya's mind.

The scene, of great compositional simplicity but with great expressive and plastic power, shows the charge of a bull or steer that lunges from the left at a group of four young men in a row, protected by a basket held by the first of them. Goya perfectly depicts the movement generated by the bull's strong lunge as it lifts the bull's front legs and the first two runners, who are lifted into the air.

Exposiciones
  • Madrid
    2002
Bibliografía
  • SÁNCHEZ CANTÓN. Francisco Javier
    MadridMuseo del Prado
    1954
    cat. 194
  • HARRIS, Tomás
    OxfordBruno Cassirer
    1964
    vol. II, 1964, p. 362, cat. 247b
  • GASSIER, Pierre y WILSON, Juliet
    Vie et ouvre de Francisco de Goya
    ParísOffice du livre
    1970
    p. 281, cat. 1243
  • GASSIER, Pierre
    Dibujos de Goya, 2 vols
    BarcelonaNoguer
    1975
    pp. 428-429, cat. 289
  • LAFUENTE FERRARI, Enrique
    MadridSilex
    1980
    cat. 54
  • ANSÓN NAVARRO, Arturo
    Goya y Aragón. Familia, amistades y encargos artísticos
    col. Col. Mariano de Pano y Ruata
    ZaragozaCaja de Ahorros de la Inmaculada de Aragón
    1995
    pp. 227-228
  • MATILLA, José Manuel y MEDRANO, José Miguel
    MadridMuseo Nacional del Prado
    2001
    p. 111
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