Friar Pedro Binds El Maragato with a Rope

Francisco de Goya turned an everyday thunderbolt of a story into one of the most spirited small pictures of his career. In May 1806 the outlaw El Maragato stormed a farmstead where the Franciscan Friar Pedro de Zaldivia happened to be; the wiry friar overpowered the armed bandit, and the celebrated incident made him a national hero. Goya painted it about 1806 in a taut sequence of three small canvases, this panel capturing the decisive instant as Pedro pins the brigand to the ground and trusses him, the onlookers’ faces ringing the scuffle. With its swift, nervous handling and broad baroque diagonals, it shows Goya’s reportorial genius racing ahead of his time. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.