When we carefully study Goya’s tapestry cardboards (“cartones” as they are known), it is moving to discover the timelessness in what is painted. The master sublimates the costumbrist scene in order to transcend it. In these “cartones” there is a beat, perhaps involuntary, that tells us something about the eternity of the moment.

“Francisco’s” emerges from the meditation in that beat, which remains when the figures that star in these scenes have already disappeared and those spaces have been transformed. The breath has no memory but still remains there. To observe this breathing and find it in the absence of all human action and presence brings us closer to an idea of eternity in this earthly world.