Hexenhinrichtung
Francisco Goya·1822
Historical Context
Hexenhinrichtung (Witch's Execution) dates from around 1822 and belongs to Goya's late series of small dark paintings that share thematic and stylistic affinities with the Black Paintings. The scene of a witch being burned at the stake reflects Goya's lifelong preoccupation with superstition, fanaticism, and institutional cruelty — themes he had explored in the Caprichos etchings and would return to repeatedly. Now in the Bavarian State Painting Collections in Munich, the painting was acquired through the nineteenth-century art market that dispersed many of Goya's smaller works across European collections. Its dark palette and visceral subject matter place it squarely within Goya's most uncompromising late phase.
Technical Analysis
Goya renders the horrific scene with the dark, nightmarish intensity of his Black Paintings, using the contrast between the victim's suffering and the crowd's participation to create an image of collective brutality.
Look Closer
- ◆Notice the nightmarish intensity shared with the Black Paintings: this late cabinet painting uses the same dark palette and expressive brushwork as the Quinta del Sordo murals.
- ◆Look at the crowd participating in the burning: Goya renders collective cruelty with the same unflinching observation he brought to all his treatments of institutional and popular violence.
- ◆Observe the fire as both subject and metaphor: the burning provides dramatic lighting while enacting the destruction that fanaticism produces.
- ◆Find the political timing: painted in 1822 when Ferdinand VII had restored the Inquisition, this witch's execution carries contemporary political urgency beyond its historical setting.
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