Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

During the last years of his life, Goya painted a group of small works on ivory. He employed an innovative technique here, darkening the ivory with lamp black, or soot, then dropping water on the surface to loosen and stain the ground. He manipulated the medium with his brush, sometimes adding watercolor or incising the
ground with a sharp instrument. Essentially moving from shadow to light, he revealed biblical and genre scenes, animating them with dramatically expressive faces. In
this image, two boys are caught in the act of reading. They peer closely at a book, their cheeks flushed by a wash of watercolor. The smaller boy smiles faintly while
his companion, dressed in a smock, narrows his eyes in concentration.