The Game of the Chicken, large oil on canvas of the French school of the eighteenth century

The Game of the Chicken, large oil on canvas of the French school of the eighteenth century
Important oil on canvas. CANVAS MEASURES: 135X101 CM WITHOUT FRAME. MEASUREMENTS WITH FRAME: 172X140 CM - Blind Man's Chicken (1789) is one of the cartoons that served as a model for the manufactures of the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara by Francisco de Goya and was intended for decorating the children's bedroom in the Palace of El Pardo and was carried out shortly after King Carlos IV acceded to the throne of Spain. This is the fourth series of cartoons that Goya made between 1788 and 1792, dedicated to country leisure and fun. An earlier sketch of this cartoon is preserved in the Museo del Prado. This painting shows children playing the popular pastime of "blind man's buff", with a blindfolded figure in the center trying to tempt the others, who dance in a circle, with a large spoon. The young people wear majos and majas, costumes of the lowest layers of Spanish society in which aristocrats (like those in this painting) liked to dress. Others, with velvet jackets and feather headdresses, rather follow the fashion dictates of the upper classes of France. The composition is resolved by alternating the figures between the gaps left by those in the foreground and those in the background, and opposing the young man who bends down to the right to avoid the ladle with which he tries to touch it and the woman lying down with another young man who does so. forward. The painting is an outstanding representative of the gallant or rococo style, and its characteristic stylistic features: liveliness, immediacy, curiosity, soft pink colors, muslin textures on the women's skirts,