Pilgrimage to the Fountain of San Isidro

Pilgrimage to the Fountain of San Isidro, painted around 1820 and held at the Museo del Prado, is one of Goya’s Black Paintings—the series of profoundly disturbing murals he painted directly on the walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo. The painting depicts a religious procession transformed into a nightmarish scene of mass hysteria, the faces of the pilgrims distorted by fanaticism and madness. Goya’s Black Paintings, created during his final years in Spain before exile to France, represent the most radical artistic statement of the early nineteenth century. They were never intended for public display, making them among the most personal and psychologically revealing works in art history.

Goya applies paint with savage energy, creating distorted faces and bodies that emerge from the darkness like hallucinations. The predominantly black and brown palette with flashes of white create an atmosphere of collective madness unmatched in Western painting.