This is one of the strange “Black Paintings” Goya made on the walls of the house he lived in after becoming profoundly deaf. It depicts a group of people on the annual pilgrimage towards the hermitage of San Isidro outside Madrid, a subject Goya had painted for the first time thirty years earlier. Whereas that painting shows happy, well-to do crowd merry-making in the sunshine, here - after the ravages of the war of Independence and persecutions related to the Spanish Inquisition - the revellers are dressed in rags, their faces distorted by pain, hunger and intoxication. Adding to the sense of desolation is the colour palette which is limited to blacks, ochres, grays and earth tones. Along with the other paintings from the Quinta del Sordo, A Pilgrimage to San Isidro has been a key source for modern artists such as Pablo Picasso and those of the expressionist movement.