'Merry Folly' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish
Not on view
Three men and three women, all dressed in the popular fashion of majos and majas, dance in a circle while playing castanets, in an image that evokes the Spanish saying "merry like a pair of castanets." The odd pairing of the three old men—two balding and corpulent and a hunchbacked third leaping at left—with three overdressed and buxom young women signals that Goya’s depiction of merriment here is a parody. Their mismatch alludes to the theme of mutual deception in relationships between men and women that Goya explored throughout his work.
From the posthumous first edition published by the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid in 1864 under the title 'Los Proverbios'.
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