Bullfight, Suerte de Varas

Getty Museum

Bullfight, Suerte de Varas

Creator

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco de Goya)

Spanish Artist · 1746–1828

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Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes welcomed and received official honors and worldly success with enthusiasm. At the same time he left a ruthlessly penetrating record of his patrons and private expressions of introspection, moral objectivity, and caustic commentary on his times. By the 1780s Goya was Spain's leading painter, specializing in religious pictures and portraits. He acknowledged three m

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Object Description · Getty Museum

Before a mesmerized crowd, man and beast dramatically confront one another. The fiercely determined *picador* leans forward and gathers all his strength, readying himself to stab the impassive bull with his sharp lance. Dying or wounded animals lie on the ground, and the bloody undersides of the *picador's* horse convey the abusive and violent aspects of the sport of bullfighting. The bull coolly eyes his opponent as a group of fearful men try to distract the savage animal. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes painted this work late in his career when he had begun experimenting with different techniques. Showing remarkable freedom, Goya used a heavily loaded brush, a palette knife, a rag, and even his fingers to apply paint to the canvas. Thick black strokes of paint suggest tension and movement, while dark shadows and a faceless crowd in the background lend an ominous air to this emotional confrontation.

Getty Museum’s catalogue record

produced_by.carried_out_by[0].id
https://data.getty.edu/museum/collection/person/acb10605-639f-4c07-8936-d1a64a830794
Artist/Maker
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco de Goya)
subject_of[Homepage].id
https://www.getty.edu/art/collection/object/103RJW
Date
1824
Medium
Oil on canvas
Culture
Spanish
Object Type
Painting

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Getty Museum’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

A seventy-eight-year-old Goya, exiled in France and nearly deaf, painted this raw confrontation between a picador and a bull in 1824. The bleeding white horse and fallen animals in the foreground are rendered with frantic, thick strokes applied by brush, palette knife, rag, and even Goya's own fingers. A faceless crowd dissolves into shadow behind the chaos, lending the scene something closer to nightmare than sport. That physical urgency makes this small oil on canvas one of the most technically daring works of his final years.

Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.

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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.ujThechEqvvzzUQV.28kODfRLrGLRkW1WuVfIkvkydc3__wUcdTjUtvu0m1tbBVTJyCXTlouxyKd4ntP8Uz3ysSo6dYI39lI0qn7TwKc_nmbUwINPGMC0FX42VN2sYWzrqRTnk3nN1W-DP7TbGxXcNUMyhwoQZS93LIBUaGp0VjGts8yqcpFXYdWNyTw-AnvRwpmRTCEWGIRu8E6k88_IA42ZJVwm_WtV2AqCVyBKemhIMsZTcwt3pSYqPcsWKxFILNgoLU06_P6tedNX00VOC11A7L6ITf9iIuQzyxbB3STsOT4nnqgjs53wWFZx6h29QUy6UhvvfogIqSPUd0DauCeKEAEF1VM09RFmx1aGHNuYCQQQ1AzwBlrQHW3_S3ohU4FZNIz6EFNSQZHWc38PSGxHH9vYtSViKDDcSee at Getty Museum QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.-vIxfTrylcNv_M_L.7bNkzWrJUQfsLxs72suii1t1TneSwgVDp19EMEkYSE92VrnKcegFzAy3XXP8k9d6hfr8Vnp2mcIUpEn2oibQ6H63IdbjO7TsganpC6usjBWqLPPn2CdTDNKNqk9tU9qOTgvVj2Ej9ondncoY6pOXda0CXCA0SJMs-nCLOdHFgigkWPnbklD-nicmWYWCGavoH1sRW95Nk2vQcOOb7xScj2vxQSWnjV6vL_AKfYzul21JUlxJpUcBLZzMmr4ogvn5NQ9LhoisaZunQ6tE_7eniLr_BsLbA995AWWynCc4kuMuktztZzR9Y18kxyUpORXZii4GFkF-E8BUFe089iqU2Z1ltGaCixxFnlVgtSmLoArL1pyPaeMW6xYKb6M
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To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Getty Museum’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
9e5be3cc-da43-4120-aa33-420fda2e42e0
Object Type
Painting
  • Getty Museum field “Object Type” · copied as is
Creator
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Francisco de Goya)
  • Getty Museum field “Artist/Maker” · copied as is
Culture
Spanish
  • Getty Museum field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
Oil on canvas
  • Getty Museum field “Medium” · copied as is
Department
Paintings
  • Getty Museum field “Department” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Getty's classification category is stored as department.
Credit Line
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
  • Getty Museum field “Standard Credit Line” · the first available of several museum fields
  • Getty Museum field “Source Credit Line” · the first available of several museum fields
Date
1824
  • Getty Museum field “Date” · copied as is
Begin Year
1824
  • Getty Museum field “produced_by.timespan.begin_of_the_begin” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field
End Year
1824
  • Getty Museum field “produced_by.timespan.end_of_the_end” · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

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Bullfight, Suerte de Varas

Sep 29, 2026 · Short

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