The Bewitched Man

The Bewitched Man from 1798, at the National Gallery in London, was one of six cabinet paintings Goya made for the country house of the Duke and Duchess of Osuna at La Alameda. The Osunas were among the most progressive and intellectually distinguished aristocratic families in late eighteenth-century Spain, deeply sympathetic to Enlightenment scepticism about popular superstition, and their commission of witchcraft subjects for their private entertainment carried a double edge: they were at once fascinated by the irrational world their reason was supposed to have superseded and satirising the credulity that popular superstition required. Goya's cabinet paintings for the Osunas are visually disturbing despite their small scale — the demonic figures, the frightened victim, the nocturnal atmosphere — and they anticipate the more fully developed world of the Caprichos etchings published the following year. The specific theatrical scene depicted derives from a popular play by Antonio de Zamora, grounding Goya's supernatural imagery in contemporary popular culture. The National Gallery's holding of this work makes London one of the few places outside Spain where Goya's witchcraft series can be studied directly.

Goya's technique employs a muted, atmospheric palette with eerie greenish light that creates an unsettling nocturnal atmosphere. The fluid brushwork and the expressive distortion of the figures anticipate the darker imagery of his later Black Paintings.