Two Old Men

Two Old Men, painted around 1820–23 on the walls of Goya's Quinta del Sordo and now in the Prado, is among the most darkly comic of the Black Paintings — two ancient figures, one apparently shouting or declaiming into the other's ear, their grotesque faces suggesting extreme age or mental deterioration. Goya's own deafness, which had isolated him from verbal communication since 1793, gives the image a special personal resonance: the impossibility of communication between the two figures, the futility of words directed at an ear that cannot hear, mirrors the social reality of his own condition. The painting may also carry a political dimension — the Spain of Ferdinand VII's repression communicating nothing but noise and authority to those who could not or would not hear the official line. The Black Paintings as a group defy single interpretation; they were private works never intended for exhibition, made by an old, deaf, politically isolated painter on the walls of his own house, and their resistance to comfortable explanation is part of what makes them among the most powerful images in Western art.

Goya applies paint with raw, almost violent energy, the dark background swallowing the two figures whose distorted faces emerge with nightmarish intensity. The restricted palette of blacks, browns, and flesh tones creates an oppressive atmosphere of claustrophobic intensity.