The Parasol

The Parasol (El quitasol) is an oil-on-canvas cartoon painted by Francisco Goya in 1777 as the full-size design for a woven hanging in the dining room of the Prince and Princess of Asturias at the palace of El Pardo; it is now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

From 1775 to 1792 Goya produced cartoons for the Royal Factory of Santa Bárbara, his first major body of work. The Princes of Asturias, the future Charles IV and María Luisa of Parma, wanted cheerful scenes of Spanish life for their dining room, and Goya supplied a set of ten country subjects, all now in the Prado; the documents state that the compositions were his own invention. The Parasol was probably painted between 3 March and 12 August 1777, when it was delivered to the factory. Goya valued it at 500 reales, and received 18,000 reales for the whole series. It was paired with The Drinker and hung high, which explains the low viewpoint.

A young woman in French fashion sits on the ground with a fan in her hand and a small dog in her lap, smiling straight at the viewer. Behind her a majo, his hair in a net and a bright silk sash at his waist, shades her with a green parasol, his legs hidden by a mound of earth that separates the two planes. The figures form a pyramid, a classical scheme Goya learned from Anton Raphael Mengs, and the light filtered through the parasol falls softly on her face, while yellow skirt and blue bodice contrast and trees bend in the wind at right. The Prado suggests Jean Ranc's Vertumnus and Pomona, now in Montpellier, as a model, turned by Goya from myth into modern life.

The canvas measures 104 × 152 cm. It was moved to the Royal Palace in Madrid in 1856–1857, entered the Prado on 15 February 1870, and first appeared in the museum's catalogue in 1876.