Plate 55 from "Los Caprichos": Until death (Hasta la muerte)
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish
Not on view
The figure at the center has been variously identified as a vain woman getting ready to celebrate her seventy-fifth birthday or a representation of death itself. She sits at the mirror in her boudoir, trying on a new headpiece, while her maid and two young men—possibly her professed admirers—conceal their sneering. The image shares the tone and concerns of the social satires that appear earlier in the series. Its position might be explained by the old woman’s physical appearance; the artist often used features meant to be read as grotesque to imply moral conditions. The mild caricatures of the first part of the Caprichos yield in the second part to witches, monsters, and barely human clerics.
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