In the summer of 1806 in Spain, on the run after a prison escape, the dreaded bandit El Maragato overtook a family in their home and held them hostage. Among the family members was Pedro de Zaldivia, a lay Franciscan brother who stopped by the house to beg for alms. The humble monk ended up turning the tables on his captor, seizing El Maragato’s rifle and shooting him in the thigh to subdue him before he could grab another gun from his horse. The story of the heroic friar swept through Spain, not only via reports in newspapers and pamphlets but also in ballads and prints.

Although at the time Francisco Goya was chief painter to the Spanish king, he was interested in the range of human experience, including current events, and the tale of Zaldivia and El Maragato evidently captured his imagination. This small, lively painting belongs to a series of six at the Art Institute, which, like a modern-day comic strip, dramatically illustrates the story. The climactic scene here presents the bandit’s degrading and humorous downfall. As in all the panels, Goya’s broad, quick brushwork dispenses with unnecessary detail to pinpoint the essential drama of the moment.

This narrative series stands in marked contrast to the portraits of royalty and nobility that make up much of Goya’s painted works. His other small-format paintings similarly treat traditional pastimes, superstitions, and scenes from daily life with a popular realism that is oft en darkly comic in tone. Goya may have created the El Maragato series for his own amusement rather than as a commission, since they were still listed among his possessions in an 1812 inventory.