Young and old : The Caprices

Francisco de Goya, the great inspirer of romantic fantasy engraving, represented this flight scene in 1799 as part of his famous series “Los Caprichos”, a satire of Spanish society and especially of its clergy. “Linda maestra!”, or “Pretty mistress!” "could be interpreted, in accordance with its ironic title, as a scene of sexual initiation between the two naked women, sharing the same broom, symbol of male virility. Goya accentuates the ugliness of the witch - humpbacked, half bald, with prominent facial bones - whose physique could just as well be that of an old man. Eroticism and gender ambivalence are definitely part of the visual history of the witch, and may come to be reappropriated in contemporary thought: it is the witch who challenges male sexual domination.téléchargeabl