- Cronología
- 1824 - 1825
- Ubicación
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Boston, United States
- Dimensiones
- 5.9 x 6 cm
- Técnica y soporte
- Watercolor on ivory
- Reconocimiento de la autoría de Goya
- Undisputed work
- Titular
- Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Ficha: realización/revisión
- 17 May 2010 / 15 Jun 2023
- Inventario
- (1992.326)
- Otros títulos:
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Boy Staring at an Apparition (Muchacho viendo una aparición)
See Maja and Celestina.
This work was put up for auction at the Hôtel Drouot auction house, Paris, in 1937. It was later in a private collection in England. In around 1970 it entered the collection of the historian Eleanor A. Sayre, in Cambridge (MA), USA. On 24 June 1992 she donated it to the museum that houses it today.
For the artistic and technical analysis of the complete series, see Maja and Celestina.
On the right-hand side of the composition we see the profile of a boy's head, with blond curly hair, his mouth open in fright at the vision before him. What he is looking at could be a man but appears more like a ghostly apparition, since the figure's face is almost completely blurred, as if it were utterly deformed, or covered by a horrible mask.
In this miniature the influence of the Black Paintings is especially evident, even more so than in the rest of the ivory pieces.
Rita de Angelis mentions another, similar piece entitled Two Heads (p. 136, cat. 686), which has the same subject matter and composition. As Angelis says, they are clearly not the same work, meaning that this imagery was therefore reproduced independently. She does not however provide any additional information about the other work's authenticity or whereabouts.
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Goya. El Capricho y la Invención. Cuadros de gabinete, bocetos y miniaturasMuseo Nacional del PradoMadrid1993from November 18th 1993 to February 15th 1994. Exhibited also at the Royal Academy of Arts, London, March 18th to June 12th 1994 and The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, July 16th to October 16th 1994, consultant editors Manuela B. Mena Marqués and Juliet Wilson-Bareaucat. 109
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Goya’s Bordeaux miniatures, , , Boston, 1966Museum of Fine Arts Boston Bulletin1966p. 122, cat. 23
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Vie et ouvre de Francisco de GoyaParísOffice du livre1970pp. 357, 363, cat. 1693
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BarcelonaPolígrafa1970vol. I, p. 386, cat. 755
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L’opera pittorica completa di GoyaMilanRizzoli1974p. 136, cat. 685
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Francisco de Goya, 4 vols.ZaragozaCaja de Ahorros de Zaragoza, Aragón y Rioja1980-1982vol. IV, p. 218
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Goya. El capricho y la invención. Cuadros de gabinete, bocetos y miniaturasMadridMuseo del Prado1993pp. 324-325, 381, cat. 109 y p. 328 (il.