The Bonfire (La hoguera)

Inside a cave, a group of naked men stand beside a large fire. Their faces are coarsely rendered using rough, crude brushstrokes.

As in many other works from this same period, Goya has relegated the surrounding space to a very secondary role, and has provided us with minimal information about the place in which the scene is taking place. Instead, our attention is focussed on the human figures, whose primitive nature Goya has chosen to emphasize, and on the fire which occupies the entire central part of the scene.

There exists a smaller replica of this picture (32 x 42 cm), painted on tinplate, in the Prado Museum. It was donated to the Madrid museum in 1912 by the collector Cristóbal Férriz y Sicilia.

The present work is the companion piece to The Cutting of a Woman's Throat and, due to its subject matter and its formal characteristics, is also closely related to the scenes of cannibalism depicted in the works housed at the fine arts museum of Besançon, Cannibals Contemplating Human Remains and Cannibals Preparing their Victims.