fascination with golems and ghouls. They were commissioned by the fashionable Duke and Duchess of Osuna, whose former country house, El Capricho de la Alameda de Osuna, today finds itself near Madrid’s Barajas airport. Once a retreat worthy of the cream of Spain’s hereditary and intellectual aristocracy, the palace has been turned into one of the city’s least-known public parks. It’s possible to see immigrant families and their children enjoying its landscaped gardens today. Two centuries ago, the duchess ferried Goya and other genteel guests in miniature boats around the compound’s artificial lake on the way to elegant luncheons in her twin pavilions. NOT FAR FROM ATOCHA, Madrid’s main train station, is a cluster of institutions intimately connected to Goya. There’s the Palacio Real, where Queen Maria Luisa’s homely portrait hangs. There’s the Basilica of San Francisco el Grande, where Goya cockily painted himself in the altarpiece depicting giving a sermon in San Bernardino. And there’s the Royal Tapestry Factory, where Goya’s career began in earnest. In his youth, he worked as a salaried painter for the factory, Madrid’s version of Les Gobelins, the Paris tapestry works. On the surface, little seems to have changed at the Real Fábrica, as it’s known here, since the time of its founder, Philip V. It’s still possible to walk among the teams of lady weavers spinning on 300-year-old looms – but perhaps not for long. According to Antonio Sama, the factory’s lead curator, Goya’s tapestry designs are still available for around €12,200 to €15,250 a square metre. Despite the tapestries’ popularity among private collectors and museums, the factory came close to folding last year. Run as a nonprofit foundation but supported by an overburdened Spanish state that currently faces sluggish growth and youth unemployment at around 40%, the institution nearly fell victim to the country’s prolonged economic crisis. Goya “speaks like no other artist to difficult periods in history,” says Manuel Borja-Villel, the director of Spain’s leading contemporary-art museum, the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. Goya’s appeal, he suggests, has always been broad – a court painter of undeniable genius who was also a populist at heart. “There are a lot of Goyas,” says Borja-Villel. “There’s the funloving Goya, the Goya of the royal portraits, the Enlightenment Goya and the scourge-of-reason Goya. But throughout there is also something uniquely democratic about him. He is among the first artists in the world to break the barrier between high and low culture, which makes him perfect for this city.” Of all the popular encounters to have with Goya in Madrid, the most intimate by far is to be had at the Hermitage of San Antonio de la Florida, near what was once the vast sloping meadow of San Isidro. The hermitage’s tiny chapel, which receives just a trickle of visitors, contains one of the high points of Spanish art and an enduring mystery. The painter is buried here; his remains were removed from Bordeaux, France (where he was exiled late in his life), and reinterred in 1929 – minus his skull, which was lost. Above the artist’s tomb is one of the greatest works to be seen on the hunt for the salt-of-the-earth Goya that so vividly defines Madrid: a fresco cycle that depicts the miracle of Saint Anthony of Padua and features grooms, labourers, children, maids, swells and shady characters, among other urban fauna. Every one of these figures is identifiable today on a Madrid street, a cafe terrace, or in the stands of a football stadium. Goya’s love letter to his city, the painting doesn’t depict kings, queens or popes. Instead, it’s about what he saw flourishing all around him: the extraordinary character of Madrid’s ordinary people. From left: Goya’s Portrait of Carlos IV; Madrid’s Palacio Real, or Royal Palace, which contains several of the artist’s masterpieces FOR A GUIDE TO MADRID‘S HOT SPOTS, GO TO: CENTURION-MAGAZINE.COM
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