Coplas de ciego - History Lab https://historylab.es Fri, 20 May 2022 07:39:56 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.0 https://historylab.es/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/cropped-icono-historylab-32x32.jpg Coplas de ciego - History Lab https://historylab.es 32 32 The blind man and the guitar https://historylab.es/the-blind-man-and-the-guitar/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=the-blind-man-and-the-guitar Sat, 19 Feb 2022 16:30:19 +0000 https://historylab.es/2022/02/19/el-ciego-y-la-guitarra/ The work, painted by Goya, shows a blind man surrounded by a group of blind people playing the guitar in front of them. This musical practice was widespread among the blind, as other portraits of the period show

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]]> The motif of the work depicted by Francisco de Goya shows a blind man accompanied by his guide who sings simple couplets to the sound of the guitar. Dramatic and gruesome in character, its lyrics consisted of the plots of the so-called “coplas de ciego” (blind man’s couplets). Their singing aroused the interest of a varied audience, whose components expressed emotions ranging from the discipline of the elegant gentleman (a “foreigner”, as Goya described in the invoice for the cardboard to the Fábrica de Tapices), to the fascination of the black water carrier or the young woman and the young men of the village. The resulting tapestry hung in the dining room of the Princes of Asturias (the future Charles IV and Maria Luisa of Parma)

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