The Ornamented Being

“Night’s swift dragons cut the clouds full fast and yonder shines Aurora’s harbinger; At whose approach, ghosts, wandering here and there, Troop home to churchyards.”

“The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.” – Samuel Johnson

In the last quarter of the 18th century in Spain there was a fashion for the wealthy that consisted in imitate the style of dress of the “majos”, gypsies that lived in Madrid. There aren’t any extant polonaises that have that style, but I like the polonaise and the “maja” style (you can see an example in the photo), and I decided I wanted to use the two for my project.