10 Euros Francisco de Goya - The Drowning Dog

This piece belongs to Spain's ongoing series reproducing works from the Pinturas negras — the "Black Paintings" Goya applied directly to the plaster walls of his house outside Madrid, the Quinta del Sordo, between roughly 1819 and 1823. He never exhibited them, never explained them, and almost certainly never intended them for public view. The dog in question, half-submerged or perhaps climbing a dune, facing something entirely outside the picture plane, has generated more interpretive argument per square centimeter than almost any other work in Spanish art history.

The paintings were transferred to canvas by Salvador Martínez Cubells in the 1870s on behalf of Baron Frédéric Émile d'Erlanger, who then donated them to the Prado in 1881.