The Dog — Goya
One of the great works of Spanish painting is also the story of how external factors also sculpt the narrative of art.
Art history has studied works that have offered an innumerable variety of narratives, both intrinsically and externally.
The biographies of the works of art themselves, their vicissitudes as objects with their entity and determined value, have given rise to great stories, some of which have transcended time and have even created a legend that has survived to the present day.
In the case of The Dog, one of the Black Paintings that Francisco de Goya painted and later decorated was the house that the Spanish painter acquired in 1819.
The narrative that the work carries behind it gives it a place in Spanish painting, but also that very existential baggage as a painting determines in part the way in which we can analyze it today.
The Dog, along with the rest of the paintings, was moved on two levels: of location (from Goya’s house to the Prado Museum) and surface, since they were transferred from the walls to canvas.
That happened almost 150 years ago, a time that has influenced the current state of the painting.
