Francisco De Goya Y Lucientes (1746-1829), Follower Of - Love Songs For A Duchess

Oil on panel.

In 18th-century Spain, amid the pungent scents of taverns and the gilded mirrors of court salons, majisme operated a strange social alchemy: the majos, arrogant princes of the declining Manzanares, began to don elegant coats and imitate French refinements, while the marquises indulged in the revels of the balls, under the guise of majas, seeking in the black mantilla and in their traditional, unvarnished Spanish charm a truth more ardent than court etiquette. This game of masquerade - at once erotic play, political challenge and popular theater - is echoed in the bawdy songs of Pablo Esteve and Grimau and immortalized in the drawings of Francisco de Goya, where intrepid commoners and ladies of high society seem to share the same festive light, as if, for a moment, the entire kingdom had wished to forget the rigidity of blood ties and indulge in the voluptuous fiction of being someone else.

- Image size unframed: 62 x 48 cm / 72 x 57.5 cm with exclusive custom frame.