Burial of Sardine. The Burial of the Sardine is an oil-on-panel painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, usually dated to the 1810s.
The title is posthumous, referring to the culminating event of a three-day carnival in Madrid ending on Ash Wednesday. Masked and disguised revellers are seen dancing their way to the banks of the Manzanares, where a ceremonial sardine will be buried.
Goya does not illustrate the fish in the painting, nor the large doll made of straw, called a pelele, from which it hung; the centrepiece is the darkly grinning King of the Carnival. The painting has been dated between 1793 and 1819, but most accounts place it toward the end of this range on account of the painting's style and its place within the shifting themes of Goya's art as he aged.
The Burial appears to fit within a progression beginning with the artist's bright, youthful works, in which he painted commissions of popular entertainments and colourful cartoon tapestries, and his much later, psychologically darker Black Paintings. The painting is certainly a tribute to the common people, depicting an exuberant crowd carousing on the first day of Lent while other Spanish Catholics worship at church.
Yet the celebration takes on a sinister aspect due to the many masked and blank faces surrounding the gaily dancing women in white; the grey, distorted trees and encroaching dark colours; and the eye-catching black ban
The title is posthumous, referring to the culminating event of a three-day carnival in Madrid ending on Ash Wednesday. Masked and disguised revellers are seen dancing their way to the banks of the Manzanares, where a ceremonial sardine will be buried.
Goya does not illustrate the fish in the painting, nor the large doll made of straw, called a pelele, from which it hung; the centrepiece is the darkly grinning King of the Carnival. The painting has been dated between 1793 and 1819, but most accounts place it toward the end of this range on account of the painting's style and its place within the shifting themes of Goya's art as he aged.
The Burial appears to fit within a progression beginning with the artist's bright, youthful works, in which he painted commissions of popular entertainments and colourful cartoon tapestries, and his much later, psychologically darker Black Paintings. The painting is certainly a tribute to the common people, depicting an exuberant crowd carousing on the first day of Lent while other Spanish Catholics worship at church.
Yet the celebration takes on a sinister aspect due to the many masked and blank faces surrounding the gaily dancing women in white; the grey, distorted trees and encroaching dark colours; and the eye-catching black ban
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