When Francisco de Goya painted The stilts in 1791, he was working on a remarkable commission: a series of cartoons for tapestries intended to decorate the walls of the Royal Palace of El Pardo. These playful, enigmatic scenes were meant for the private entertainment rooms of the Spanish royal family, and The stilts stands out for its ambiguous mood—at once festive and unsettling. The painting is part of Goya’s second series of tapestry cartoons, created during a period when he was both favored by the court and increasingly drawn to the mysteries and shadows of popular life. In The stilts, four children teeter high above the ground on spindly wooden legs, their faces masked and their costumes festive, as if caught in the midst of a carnival game.

The moment Goya captures is one of precarious balance: the children’s arms are outstretched, their bodies tense with concentration, while a crowd of onlookers—some laughing, some anxious—watches from below. The bright costumes and lively gestures suggest innocent play, yet the masks and the precarious height hint at danger and the unpredictability of fate. The painting’s ambiguous tone invites comparison with Jean-Honoré Fragonard’s light-hearted fêtes galantes, but Goya’s treatment is sharper, more ironic, and tinged with the darker undercurrents that would later define his work. The original tapestry cartoon for The stilts was produced in oil, though the exact medium and preparatory process remain uncertain, as the cartoons were sometimes altered in the weaving.

After serving as a model for the Royal Tapestry Factory, the cartoon survived, unlike many others that were damaged or lost. Today, it resides in the Museo del Prado, part of the world’s most important collection of Goya’s works. This period marked a turning point for Goya, as he began to move beyond the decorative demands of royal patronage to explore more personal and unsettling themes—a path that would ultimately lead to his most daring and innovative paintings.