El albañil borracho (boceto)

The Drunken Mason sketch from 1786, in the Prado, is a preparatory oil boceto for the larger tapestry cartoon of the same subject, and its freely executed technique captures the quick, decisive brushwork that characterised Goya's preparatory thinking. The subject — a construction worker being carried home by his companions after a work-site accident or excessive drinking — carries ambiguous social comment: the tapestry programme required cheerful popular subjects, yet this wounded or intoxicated labourer introduces a note of working-class hardship rarely acknowledged in decorative art for royal apartments. Goya's tapestry bocetos are often more frankly observed and technically spontaneous than the finished cartoons, and the Prado's collection of both finished cartoons and preliminary sketches allows direct comparison of how his initial observational impulse was modified by the decorative requirements of the final commission. The sketch format's freedom from the obligation of decorative finish reveals something closer to his natural observational instinct.

The sketch's rapid, fluid execution demonstrates Goya's natural painterly freedom before the constraints of the finished cartoon format. The warm palette and the expressive rendering of the staggering figures show the spontaneous handling that characterizes his best preparatory work.