Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat)

It evokes themes of violence, intimidation, ageing and death;[2] Satan hulks in the form of a goat in moonlit silhouette over a coven of terrified old witches.

The work is one of the fourteen Black Paintings that Goya applied in oil on the plaster walls of his house, the Quinta del Sordo.

As with the other works in the group, Witches' Sabbath reflects its painter's disillusionment and can be linked thematically to his earlier etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters as well as the Disasters of War print series, another bold political statement published only posthumously.

He deliberately suppressed a number of his works from this period – most notably the Disasters of War series – which are today considered amongst his finest.

[11] He was tormented by a dread of old age and fear of madness, the latter possibly from anxiety caused by an undiagnosed illness that left him deaf from the early 1790s.

[15] It is thought that he had hoped for political and religious reform, but like many liberals became disillusioned when the restored Bourbon monarchy and Catholic hierarchy rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812.

[17] An 1830 inventory by Brugada indicates that the work took a full wall between two windows on the first floor, opposite A Pilgrimage to San Isidro.

To preserve them, the new owner of the house had them transferred to canvas under the direction of the art restorer of the Museo del Prado, Salvador Martínez Cubells.

Describing the women, art historian Brian McQuade writes that the "sub-humanity of the gathered group is underlined by their bestial features and moronic stares".

[30] Satan's absolute power over the women has been compared to that of the king in Goya's 1815 The Junta of the Philippines, where authority is gained not from respect or personal charisma, but through fear and domination.

[34] The plaster was underlaid with thick carbon black before the paint was applied in hues of white lead, Prussian blue, vermilion of mercury, and crystals of powdered glass, orpiment and iron oxides.

The art historian Fred Licht described Goya's brushwork as "clumsy, ponderous, and rough" and in areas lacking the finish found in his earlier work.

[30][37] Witches' Sabbath is believed to be a rather bitter but silent protest against the royalists and clergy who had retaken control of Spain after the Peninsular War of 1807–14.

Spanish advocates of the Enlightenment sought to redistribute land to the peasants, educate women, publish a vernacular Bible, and by replacing superstition with reason, put an end to the Inquisition.

In Witches' Sabbath, Goya seems to mock and ridicule the superstition, fear, and irrationality of those placing their faith in ghouls, quack doctors and tyrants.

[15][14][40] Goya had used witchcraft imagery in his 1797–98 Caprichos print series,[41] and in his 1789 painting Witches' Sabbath, where the Devil is also depicted as a goat surrounded by a circle of terrified women.

[24] Some art historians believe the removed area on the right was beyond restoration, given how unlikely it is that a large section of a painting by an artist of Goya's stature would be lightly discarded.

[32] However, the removal may have been for aesthetic reasons, with the resultant empty space intended to bring balance to a canvas perceived as overlong.

Time and a complicated transfer involving mounting crumbling plaster onto canvas lead to structural damage and paint loss.