''A Pilgrimage to San Isidro'' (Spanish: ''La romería de San Isidro'') is one of the ''

Black Paintings The ''Black Paintings'' (Spanish: ''Pinturas negras'') is the name given to a group of 14 paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819 and 1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his ...

'' painted by

Francisco de Goya Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...

between 1819–23 on the interior walls of the house known as Quinta del Sordo ("The House of the Deaf Man") that he purchased in 1819. It probably occupied a wall on the first floor of the house, opposite '' The Great He-Goat''. Like the other ''Black Paintings'', it was transferred to canvas in 1873–74 under the supervision of

Salvador Martínez Cubells Salvador Martínez Cubells (9 November 1845 – 21 January 1914) was a Spanish painter and art restorer ( Paintings conservator), who specialized in history painting and Costumbrismo. Biography He was born in Valencia, and received his fi ...

, a curator at the

Museo del Prado The Prado Museum ( ; ), officially known as Museo Nacional del Prado, is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to house one of the world's finest collections of European art, dating from the ...

. The owner, Baron Emile d'Erlanger, donated the canvases to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Museo del Prado. ''A Pilgrimage to San Isidro'' shows a view of the pilgrimage towards San Isidro's Hermitage of Madrid that is totally opposite to Goya's treatment of the same subject thirty years earlier in ''The Meadow of San Isidro''. If the earlier work was a question of depicting the customs of a traditional holiday in Madrid and providing a reasonably accurate view of the city, the present painting depicts a group of prominent figures in the night, apparently intoxicated and singing with distorted faces. Figures from diverse social strata also figure in the painting. In the foreground a group of humble extraction appears, while farther into the background top hats and nuns' habits can be seen. The topic of the procession was used to emphasize theatrical or satirical aspects; in this respect the picture has parallels to ''

The Burial of the Sardine ''The Burial of the Sardine'' (Spanish: ''El entierro de la sardina'') is an oil-on-panel painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, usually dated to the 1810s. The title is posthumous, referring to the culminating event of a three-day carniva ...

'', painted between 1812 and 1819. The locale of Goya's house, which was the repository for his Black Paintings, had approximately the same vantage point in which we view the pilgrims in his earlier tapestry cartoon. Now, in this darker painting, the procession may be leading up to this very house and into Goya's haunted imagination. "It is Goya whom they have come to see. And to serenade: for what does it matter to a deaf man that the guitar has no strings?" It is a recurring theme in Goya's paintings to present a crowd that fades little by little into the distance. Already it was present in ''San Isidro's Meadow'' and it was later used frequently in ''

The Disasters of War ''The Disasters of War'' ( es, Los desastres de la guerra) is a series of 8280 prints in the first published edition (1863), for which the last two plates were not available. See "Execution". prints created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spani ...

''. At the very edge of this painting the silhouette of the rocky outcroppings and that of the parading multitude coincides; this way, the opened space emphasizes the whole rest of the solid and compact mass, dehumanizing the individuals into a formless group. The exception is a figure to the right whose face can be seen in profile and seems to moan or sing. Like the other works in this series, the painting's palette is very diminished. In this case, blacks, ochres, grays and earth tones are applied with very free, energetic brushstrokes. The theme of the loss of identity in crowds in this painting can be seen as a precursor to

expressionist Expressionism is a modernist movement, initially in poetry and painting, originating in Northern Europe around the beginning of the 20th century. Its typical trait is to present the world solely from a subjective perspective, distorting it rad ...

painting, particularly the work of

James Ensor James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for most of his life. He was associated with the artistic g ...

Footnotes

Bibliography

* Benito Oterino, Agustín, ''La luz en la quinta del sordo: estudio de las formas y cotidianidad'', Madrid, Universidad Complutense, 2002, p. 33
Edición digital
. * Bozal, Valeriano, ''Francisco Goya, vida y obra'', (2 vols.) Madrid, Tf. Editores, 2005. . * Bozal, Valeriano, ''Pinturas Negras de Goya'', Tf. Editores, Madrid, 1997. * Glendinning, Nigel, ''Francisco de Goya'', Madrid, Cuadernos de Historia 16 (col. «El arte y sus creadores», nº 30), 1993. * Hagen, Rose-Marie and Hagen, Rainer, ''Francisco de Goya'', Cologne, Taschen, 2003. . * Hughes, Robert. ''Goya''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Pilgrimage to San Isidro Paintings by Francisco Goya in the Museo del Prado 1820s paintings

See also

Footnotes

Bibliography

External links