Francisco de Goya (b. 1746, Fuentedetodos) 

Disparate ridiculo (Ridiculous Folly)

ca. 1816–19, published 1864 (first edition), etching, aquatint and drypoint, plate: 25.4 × 35 cm.; framed: 43.5 × 59.35 × 2.55 cm.

National Gallery of Art, Washington, marked as public domain.

A group of old women and men wrapped in cloaks and blankets nestle in a tree branch against a hazy, dark sky. They are listening to a figure sitting opposite them and almost entirely covered by a striped mantle. Only his or her hands – of which one is raised in an emphatic gesture – are visible. Who is this enigmatic person and is their message one of real or false hope? Goya’s caption, Ridiculous Folly, suggests pessimism. The group seems to symbolise for him an exhausted and desperate Spanish nation which the press often spoke about as a tree. The print was produced at a time when the years of war, poverty and famine must have made it difficult for the artist to reimagine a better future.