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The visit to the interesting José Lázaro Galdiano Museum (1862-1947) in Madrid provides very remarkable paintings by Goya, Murillo, El Bosch, El Greco, Velázquez, Paret and brings together more than 12,600 artistic pieces.
The group of Goya’s works alone would be enough to open a small monographic museum. Among the seven paintings recognized as autographs, the following stand out: The Witches and The Coven of 1798, a Burial of Christ painted for the private oratory of the Counts of Sobradiel in Zaragoza, a penitent Magdalene from her youth and The Threshing, along with engravings of all the author’s series, with numerous state proofs, as well as drawings or autograph letters.
My objective of this visit is the painting The Threat, also called The Era or The Summer, which can be seen in another format in the Prado Museum and also in the General Captaincy of Madrid, as informed me by the museum’s kind curator, Carmen Espinosa. , who guided my steps.
It presents a panoramic composition like a frieze, which collects different attitudes of a group of reapers in a moment of rest. It was designed by Francisco de Goya during his fifth series of tapestry cartoons. It became the tapestry The Era.
It was presented to the princes Carlos de Borbón and María Luisa de Parma, as well as to King Carlos III at the end of 1786. It was painted by Goya during his stay at the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara under the direction of his brother-in-law Ramón Bayeu and by the painter Mariano Salvador Maella, the same year he was appointed painter to the king.
Following the indication of Charles III, the themes had to be “paintings of jocular and pleasant subjects” and that is why Goya welcomed the representation of the four seasons: The flower vases, The threshing floor, The grape harvest and The snowfall.
Years later Goya put this sketch up for sale along with a huge amount of his works to the Dukes of Osuna, great patrons of his work. They remained in the Alameda de Osuna—the personal palace of the dukes decorated by paintings designed by the Fuendetodos painter—from 1788 to 1896, when it was sold at auction to R. Trauman, creator of the Franz Mayer Trauman Museum in Mexico. José Lázaro Galdiano acquired it between 1925 and 1927 and it remains in Madrid to this day.
This sketch has a panoramic view based on three groups, three different attitudes of farmers resting during threshing. On the left, a medieval castle stands out, and four men mock a peasant who drinks, an echo of The Drinker. Being the center of the entire composition, Goya gives him a white shirt that radiates light, the same as in The Third of May 1808 in Madrid.
Some children in the background play with a cart made of wheat and a strong horse eats peacefully. A burly farmer “in the middle of a summer nap” and a mare rest while another distributes the wheat for the next threshing. One of the women, meanwhile, has realized the danger that a child is in—probably her son—and picks him up from the wheat cart. Another woman breastfeeds her baby. She also a joyful “fatherhood.”
The palette of warm and friendly tones is a notable heritage of the Rococo that Goya deeply admired. The cloth is part of the tapestry destined for the Dining Room of Princes Carlos and María Luisa of Parma or the King’s Conversation Piece in the El Pardo Palace.
Francisco de Goya provided the cartoons for one of the most significant tapestries, made up of six façade panels with allegorical scenes of the four seasons of the year: The flower vases, The era, The harvest, The snowfall, The wounded bricklayer and Woman with children together to a source. The set was completed with six overdoors of different motifs and sizes: The ram’s boy, Children with mastiffs, Hunter next to a fountain, Shepherd playing the dulzaina, Cats quarreling next to a wall and Birds flying.
The location of the plans drawn up by Francisco Sabatini for the expansion of the El Pardo Palace has made it possible to establish which was the King’s Conversation Piece and to distribute the twelve tapestries along its four facades. The era or The summer, the largest panel in this series, was intended for the west wall, in front of the balconies facing east, so its yellow silks, used profusely, would shine when receiving the morning light to underline the warm sensation of midday, the moment in which the action takes place, and multiply the luminosity of the ears of wheat.
Goya’s sketch and cartoon for the tapestry are preserved in the Lázaro Galdiano Foundation and in the National Prado Museum, respectively.
The tapestry, its margins trimmed, was deposited in 1939 in the Ministry of War, current Army Headquarters, in the Buenavista Palace in Madrid, where it remains.
