ZAMACOIS Y ZABALA, Eduardo

In 1866 Zamacois began to portray the jesters at the French court of king Henry III (1551-1589) at play or leisure. In this case the jesters are playing cochonnet, a French game played in pairs in which a smaller ball (the cochonnet or piglet) is thrown out as a target, followed by other different coloured boules that are supposed to land as close as possible to it. In a motley composition, the jesters - whose mission was to entertain - have left their belongings and appear idle while they dispute in a carefree manner over which boule got the closest and therefore is the winner. The social and physical conditions of the characters are treated by Zamacois from a humane point of view, in accordance with the examples of dwarves and court jesters in 17th-century Spanish painting. The prominence of commonplace features is highlighted by the contrast between the idea of transcendence, represented by the historical relief of the background, and the triviality of the game practiced by the jesters.

The Untimely Visit was probably painted during a brief sojourn of Zamacois in Rome in 1868, and depicts the moment an ecclesiastic made an unexpected visit to a painter’s workshop, set in the 18th century. The artist portrayed in this picture, who happens to be painting a female nude, gets rid of his unforeseen guest while his model covers herself in a gesture of modesty. After his trip to Rome Zamacois was greatly acclaimed for such scenes, in which by means of embarrassing situations he ridiculed the ecclesiastical world. Furthermore, the picture reflects his predilection for the representation of interiors, in vogue at the time, which enabled him to arrange the compositional elements in a well-balanced fashion.