Friar Pedro Wrests the Gun from El Maragato

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · c. 1806

Medium

Oil on panel

Original size

29.2 × 38.5 cm (11 1/2 × 15 3/8 in.); Framed: 41.9 × 51.1 × 6.4 cm (16 1/2 × 20 1/8 × 2 1/2 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Neoclassicism

One of six small panels Goya painted in rapid succession, this scene crackles with physical urgency — a Mercedarian friar twisting a musket from the grip of the infamous bandit El Maragato in a single, decisive moment. Goya completed the entire six-panel series in a matter of days after the real incident became public news in June 1806, and the speed shows in the best possible way. The brushwork is loose and instinctive, the figures caught mid-struggle with a spontaneity that academic painting rarely achieved. Working on panel rather than canvas gave Goya a firm, smooth surface that suited his quick, confident strokes and allowed him to build drama with minimal layering. The event itself was widely celebrated across Spain: Friar Pedro de Zaldivia, unarmed and alone, disarmed and captured El Maragato — a notorious highwayman who had terrorised travellers for years. Goya treated it almost like a comic strip, the six panels reading left to right from confrontation to surrender. This hand-painted oil reproduction is made on the same ground — panel — that Goya used, allowing the confident, gestural quality of the original to come through rather than being smoothed into something more finished than the painter ever intended.