Cantar y bailar (Singing and Dancing)

Drawing allowed Goya’s extraordinary imagination free rein in numerous sheets that he assembled in albums later in his life, after an illness struck him in 1792-93. This puzzling work once belonged to the commonly known ‘Witches and old Women’ album. In this sheet, a woman levitates while playing a guitar, singing and dancing as the inscription below suggests.   

Executed in the last decade of the artist’s life, in this private album the artist explored themes of witchcraft, nightmares and the grotesque, revelatory also of his interest in old age, as he was himself approaching his eightieth year. These evocative compositions, full of original inventions, range from the fantastic to the diabolical, seldom providing a key to unlock Goya’s intended meaning.