ABSTRACT
Images in an album can readily assume a feeling of vicissitude quite foreign to pictures on a wall. Often, monumental or ecclesiastical fresco cycles exploit the stasis of their situation, converting each pictured incident into a timeless tableau. Francisco Goya's album pictures, on the other hand, seem adapted to the transience of their original context. In this respect, despite the inevitable loss of quality through reproduction, these pictures are better experienced in the catalogue than in the exhibition. In the following two albums, scenes of homely and pastoral tranquillity continue, the subjects — usually women — stroked into being by the brush with the delicacy of a caress. The album pictures include some pointing figures and several in analogous positions: a fencer at the far reach of his lunge; a hunter about to fire. The private context in which the images were to be viewed is echoed in the privacy of the scenes depicted.
