Goya and the witch as satire

Francisco de Goya drew and painted more witches than almost any major artist, yet he was not afraid of them. He was mocking the people who believed in them and the people who profited from that belief. In this lesson you meet Goya’s witches and practice one of the hardest skills in art history: telling when an image is joking, warning or criticising.

Los Caprichos

Historical In 1799 Goya published Los Caprichos, a set of 80 etchings with aquatint, a technique that adds soft areas of tone. They attack superstition, greed, bad education and abuses of power in Spanish society. Several show witches. Plate 68, “Linda maestra!” (“Pretty teacher!”), shows an old witch teaching a young one to fly on a broom. Plate 43, “The sleep of reason produces monsters”, shows a man asleep at his desk while owls and bats crowd around him. Goya withdrew the set from sale after a short time, and later gave the plates to the king.

How Los Caprichos were sold, and withdrawn

Historical Goya advertised Los Caprichos in the Madrid newspaper Diario de Madrid on 6 February 1799, offering the set of eighty prints at a perfumer’s shop below his home. The advertisement explained that the artist had chosen his subjects from the many follies and errors found in every society.

Within days he withdrew the set from sale, perhaps fearing the Inquisition, after selling only a few dozen copies. In 1803 he gave the copper plates and the unsold sets to King Charles IV, in exchange for a pension for his son. It was a clever way to put his satire under royal protection.

Historical The most famous plate is number 43, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos, “The sleep of reason produces monsters”. A man, often read as the artist, sleeps at his desk while owls and bats rise behind him. The Spanish word sueño means both “sleep” and “dream”, so the title can also be read as “the dream of reason produces monsters”. Scholars still debate which meaning Goya intended, and perhaps he wanted both.

The Sabbath paintings

Historical Around 1797 to 1798 Goya painted a small Witches’ Sabbath for the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, with a great goat surrounded by women holding up children. It is now in the Museo Lázaro Galdiano in Madrid. Between about 1819 and 1823 he painted the so-called Black Paintings directly on the walls of his house outside Madrid, including another, darker Witches’ Sabbath with a crowd gathered before a goat in shadow. They were later transferred to canvas and are in the Prado.

Later tradition Goya was an Enlightenment artist: for him witches were a symbol of ignorance and fear. Later viewers, and many modern witches, find the pictures haunting and beautiful in themselves. Both responses are real, but only the first was Goya’s intention as far as we can tell.

Goya and the witch trials of Logroño

Historical Goya’s friend, the playwright Leandro Fernández de Moratín, published in 1811 an annotated edition of the official account of a witch trial held by the Inquisition at Logroño in 1610, adding mocking notes. That trial, concerning people from the Basque country, led one inquisitor, Alonso de Salazar Frías, to investigate and conclude that he had found no real evidence of witchcraft. After his report, the Spanish Inquisition became notably cautious about witchcraft cases. Goya’s circle knew this history, and his witches belong to a long Spanish conversation about credulity and power.

Your satire practice, step by step

What you need: a notebook, a pen, about forty minutes and open-access images of Caprichos plates 43 and 68 from a museum website, such as the Prado or the Metropolitan Museum.

1. Look at plate 68 for five minutes before reading anything.
2. Write what you see, using observations only.
3. Read the title and note how it changes what you see.
4. Fill in four lines: who made it, for whom, in what medium, with what message.
5. Look for exaggeration, an ironic title or a figure who looks foolish: these are signs of satire.
6. Repeat for plate 43.
7. Compare plate 68 with Baldung’s woodcut from lesson 8 and Waterhouse’s The Magic Circle in three sentences: fear, satire or romance?

Journal prompts: What told you most clearly that Goya was mocking rather than warning? Do you find his witches frightening, funny or beautiful, and does your answer match his intention? What would a satirical image of superstition look like today?

A second satire practice, in prose

Once you have read plates 43 and 68, try the same method on a modern image, such as a political cartoon or a meme about witches or astrology. Write down who made it, for whom, in what medium and with what message, just as you did for Goya. Look for the same signs of satire: exaggeration, an ironic caption, a figure who looks foolish. Then compare: does the modern image mock the believers, the sellers or the critics? Doing this a few times trains you to tell mockery from celebration, a skill that is useful far beyond art history.

Modern Beginners often ask whether Goya believed in witches. Everything we know points the other way; he was mocking belief, though his later Black Paintings suggest he took human darkness very seriously. People also ask why modern witches love his images. They are powerful and strange, and reclaiming an image made to mock is a common way for groups to take back their story.

Another question is where to see them. The Prado in Madrid holds many, and museums such as the Metropolitan Museum have open-access images of the Caprichos. A myth to drop is that Goya painted the Black Paintings for an exhibition; he painted them on the walls of his own house, and they were transferred to canvas decades later.

How an etching with aquatint is made

Historical Goya’s tools shape the look of the Caprichos, and knowing them helps you read the plates. For an etching, the artist coats a copper plate with an acid-resistant ground, a thin layer of wax or resin, and draws through it with a needle, exposing the metal. The plate is dipped in acid, which bites into the exposed lines. The longer the bite, the deeper and darker the line will print. Because the needle moves freely through the soft ground, etched lines can be as loose and quick as a drawing.

Aquatint adds tone. The artist dusts the plate with fine particles of resin and heats it so they stick. Acid bites in tiny pools around each particle, and when the plate is inked and printed, those pools give a grainy, even area of grey or black, a little like a watercolor wash. By covering some areas and biting others longer, Goya could build up several shades. Many of the night skies behind his witches are aquatint, and that soft darkness is a large part of their mood.

Reading a caption

Goya’s short captions are part of the joke, and a few Spanish words go a long way. Bruja means witch, maestra a female teacher, sueño sleep or dream, as you saw in plate 43. Another witch plate is titled “Si amanece, nos vamos”, “When day breaks, we will be off”, which turns a group of frightening figures into tired revellers waiting for morning.

Historical Handwritten commentaries explaining the plates circulated in Goya’s lifetime; one well-known manuscript is kept at the Prado. They are fascinating, but scholars do not agree on who wrote them, so treat them as early readings, not as Goya’s own words.

Are Goya’s witches anti-women?

A question beginners ask: Goya’s witches are often old, grotesque women. Is the satire aimed at women? It is a fair question. Goya was mocking superstition and those who exploited it, but he used a visual language that already linked old women with foolishness and evil, the same language you saw in Baldung. You can admire his attack on ignorance and still notice that it borrowed a cruel stereotype. Holding both at once is good art history.

A practice variation: choose one witch plate and describe it twice, first as a frightened believer of 1799 might see it, then as an educated reader laughing at that believer. What in the picture supports each reading?

Why satire is hard to read

Satire depends on shared knowledge. Goya’s first buyers knew the preachers, the quack healers and the trial stories he was mocking, so they laughed at once. Two centuries later we have to rebuild that knowledge from sources before the joke becomes visible.

That is why the four questions you have been using, who made it, for whom, in what medium and with what message, matter so much here. Without them, a mocking image can easily be mistaken for a sincere one, and that mistake has been made with Goya many times. Context is what turns a strange picture into a clear joke.

A worked example

A learner looks at plate 68. She sees two figures on a broom against a dark sky, an owl flying beside them, and the older figure gripping the broom while the younger clings on behind. The title “Pretty teacher!” makes her laugh: it is ironic. Her four lines read: “Goya. Educated Spanish buyers. Etching with aquatint. Bad teachers pass on foolishness.” Her comparison: “Baldung frightens, Goya mocks, Waterhouse romanticises.”

Try this

Look at Goya’s Caprichos plate 68, “Linda maestra!”, and fill in four lines: who made it, for whom, in what medium and with what message. Then compare it in three sentences with Baldung’s 1510 woodcut from lesson 8.

Recap

Goya’s Los Caprichos (1799) uses witches to satirise superstition and those who exploit it. His Sabbath paintings, from 1797 to 1798 and the Black Paintings of about 1819 to 1823, are darker meditations on fear and ignorance. Exaggeration, irony in titles and foolish figures are the signs of satire.

What next

Press “Mark as done” and continue with Your own museum practice. The Romanticism page puts Goya in context, and Fuseli’s The Nightmare is a good companion piece.

Further reading: The Prado’s online collection pages for Los Caprichos and the Black Paintings. Robert Hughes, Goya (Knopf, 2003).

Sources

• Francisco de Goya, Los Caprichos, 80 etchings with aquatint (Madrid, 1799); plates 43 and 68.
• Francisco de Goya, The Witches’ Sabbath (El Aquelarre), oil on canvas, 1797 to 1798 (Museo Lázaro Galdiano, Madrid).
• Francisco de Goya, Witches’ Sabbath (The Great He-Goat), from the Black Paintings, about 1819 to 1823 (Museo del Prado, Madrid).

Go deeper: the art movements timeline and art history pages on this site

Mark as done