Those powders

A prisoner - in the Goyaesque engraving it is really difficult to tell whether it is a man or a woman - is seated on a raised platform. He wears a sambenito, a chasuble that was often decorated with scenes alluding to hell, and a coroza on his head. He is being subjected to a singular act of faith that was celebrated with a single prisoner, either inside a church or in a public space. In front of him stands a pulpit from which an inquisitor reads the charges from an open book. Around the pulpit and the stage, a crowd witnesses the trial. We can only make out two friars in the foreground because Goya has superficially and indistinctly captured the rest of the faces.

The explanations in the manuscripts clarify engraving no. 23 of the series; the Ayala engraving reads: " Self-belief. A rabble of foolish priests and friars make a meal of such functions. Perico the lame man who gave powder to lovers. The one in the Prado Museum reads: "Badly done! To treat a woman of honour, who for a frivolous woman served the whole world diligently, in this way is wrong! Finally, the manuscript in the National Library notes that "the rabble of priests and friars is the one who lives with the feasts of the autillos (Perico the lame)".

Goya, as an Enlightenment painter, harshly criticised the autos de fe to which those accused of witchcraft were subjected. The painter finds it difficult to understand how the accounts of witchcraft could be given credibility and, if so, these activities should be judged by the courts and not by the Inquisition.

The somewhat cryptic title may, according to Edith Helman, refer to the popular saying "the dust has turned to mud". In reality, this type of act in which witchcraft is judged is followed by an equally irrational gesture such as the death penalty. Goya demonstrated in some of the engravings in this series, as well as in The Disasters of War, an important awareness of the importance of the death penalty.