Majas on a Balcony by Goya in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, January 2022

Title: Majas on a Balcony

Artist: Attributed to Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) (Spanish, Fuendetodos 1746–1828 Bordeaux)

Date: ca. 1800–1810

Medium: Oil on canvas

Dimensions: 76 3/4 x 49 1/2in. (194.9 x 125.7cm)

Classification: Paintings

Credit Line: H. O. Havemeyer Collection, Bequest of Mrs. H. O. Havemeyer, 1929

Accession Number: 29.100.10

The theme of women on a balcony overseen by watchful, somewhat threatening male companions resulted in one of Goya’s most powerful paintings, today in a private collection and dated around 1810. This painting is sometimes considered a variant composition, its attribution questioned by some experts. Expressively and stylistically, however, the two paintings are quite different. Goya’s innovative composition in which balcony and picture plane overlap was taken up by Edouard Manet to explore urban life in the late 1860s.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/436548