Dance of the Majos at the Banks of Manzanares

Francisco Goya

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Keywords: DanceMajosBanksManzanares

Work Overview

Dance of the Majos at the Banks of Manzanares
Francisco Goya
Original Title: El baile a orillas del Manzanares
Date: 1777
Style: Romanticism
Genre: genre painting
Media: oil, canvas
Dimensions: 272 x 295 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid


This is one of the tapestry designs commissioned for the royal palaces. This tapestry cartoon represents a popular scene of Majos and Majas dancing Seguidillas on the banks of Madrid´s Manzanares River. In the background, Goya painted the area around the Pontones Bridge, near la Quinta del Sordo, the land and house he bought in 1819. The resultant tapestry was intended to hang in the dining room of the Prince and Princess of Asturias (the future Carlos IV and his wife Maria Luisa de Parma) at the Monastery of El Escorial. This work was part of a decorative series of ten cartoons for tapestries on “countryside” subjects. Goya, himself, invented the specific composition of the present one. This work entered the Prado Museum Collection in 1870 by way of Madrid´s Royal Palace.