The exhortations

A strange scene in which a horrified, wide-eyed woman recoils without letting go of the hand of a man in a white cap who is bending his head down. The grief-stricken male figure has three arms: one pointing towards the woman, one holding his head, and the third pointing towards a preacher to his left. The cadaverous-faced preacher seems to be admonishing the three-armed man, the woman being the object of his harangue, hence her panicked expression. In turn, she is advised by a hooded female figure, perhaps a nun with two faces, one on her head and one on her elbow, possibly related to the saying "to talk with one's elbows". Behind her, a deformed being has two faces, one dejected and the other laughable. On the far left of the composition, another man in an apron wears three faces on his head, two from the front and one towards the back, the front ones with a sad and happy expression and the last one as if dead. In the background there is a vague suggestion of something barely recognisable. It could be an eagle holding something in its talons, a monster carrying someone else to the meeting, or a half-dead tree with a white figure tied to it.

All the characters are linked to each other, clasped by their hands to form a sinister chain in which each one bears his own fate. The multiplicity of faces and limbs is related to Caprice 84. Of lies and constancy, although in this case not as a symbol of hypocrisy but as a stigma of destiny. Man must choose between two options, liberalism and absolutism. The anguish of the decision is embodied in the three-armed, bowed-headed man. He does not know which path to choose in the face of the dark world before him, for the exhortations of the moralists can be as terrible as the temptations they warn against. Others have interpreted the print as a vision of what a marital separation was like in Goya's time.

The light is arbitrarily concentrated on different parts of the figures in order to focus attention on them and emphasise the gloom that envelops them against the aquatint background. This is in two tones, a medium tone on the figures and the ground, and a darker tone in the upper part of the background, which contrasts with the burnishing on the left thigh of the woman in the centre and on the dress of the woman next to her.

The preparatory drawing for the present print, also entitled The Exhortations, has survived.