The Wedding by Francisco Goya

Travel photography Family-friendly: true

1791-1792. Oil on canvas, 269 x 396 cm.

A beautiful young woman has just married an ugly, fat man. From the side he looks like a pig, but he is clearly rich. Wearing a rather worn dress coat, the bride's father follows the procession with an expression somewhere between resignation and complaisance. The young women, possibly friends of the bride, laugh, and the priest appears to be laughing at the father. This story, which is repeated in other works by Goya, such as his Caprichos, denounces a common situation of that period: marriages of convenience generally arranged by parents for their own benefit. This was also denounced in contemporaneous literature by Goya's friend, Lenadro Fernández de Moratín, author of El sí de las niñas. This is one of Goya's most elaborate compositions. The masterful placement of the procession under an arch uses the architecture to frame the group, emphasizing the figures against the luminous background, especially the grotesque groom. This cartoon was for one of the tapestries intended for Carlos IV's office at El Escorial.