In 1786, Francisco de Goya received a commission from the Spanish royal court to design a series of tapestry cartoons for the dining room of the Prince and Princess of Asturias at El Pardo Palace. Among these works, The Flower Girls or Spring stands out as part of Goya’s ambitious effort to capture the changing seasons through scenes of everyday life. The tapestry cartoons were intended to bring warmth and liveliness to the palace interiors, and Goya’s lively depictions of Madrid’s people soon became as much a topic of conversation as the royal events themselves.

The project marked a turning point in Goya’s career, offering him both financial stability and direct access to the highest circles of Spanish society. In The Flower Girls or Spring, Goya chooses a moment of gentle exchange: young women gather in a sunlit meadow, their arms full of freshly picked flowers. The girls’ bright dresses and animated gestures evoke the freshness of spring, while the soft play of light on their faces suggests both innocence and vitality. Each flower, carefully rendered, hints at the fleeting beauty of youth, a theme echoed in the girls’ laughter and the easy camaraderie among them.

Unlike the more formal allegories of spring by artists such as Sandro Botticelli in Primavera, Goya grounds his scene in the real world, turning myth into a celebration of daily life and the rhythms of the Spanish countryside. The original cartoon for The Flower Girls or Spring was executed in preparation for a tapestry to be woven at the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara. While the precise medium of the cartoon is not known, Goya typically worked in oil on canvas for these designs. Over the centuries, the tapestry itself has been lost, but the cartoon survives and is now preserved in the Museo del Prado.

The work represents a crucial phase in Goya’s development, bridging his early decorative commissions and the more personal, psychologically complex paintings of his later years. Today, it offers a rare glimpse into the artist’s engagement with popular themes and the royal tastes of late eighteenth-century Spain.