Goya, Francisco de (1746-1828)
Majas al balcón (Majas on a Balcony)
c.1810
Oil on canvas, 194.9 x 125.7 cm
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
The theme of women on a balcony overseen by watchful, somewhat threatening male companions resulted in one of Goya’s most powerful paintings, today in a private collection and dated around 1810. This painting is sometimes considered a variant composition, its attribution questioned by some experts. Expressively and stylistically, however, the two paintings are quite different. Goya’s innovative composition in which balcony and picture plane overlap was taken up by Édouard Manet to explore urban life in the late 1860s. (MET)