What a tailor can do!

A crowd kneels before a rickety tree covered with a monk's habit that looks like a gigantic puppet raising its arms. In the foreground a young girl is shown in adoration, the child behind her seems to be afraid, while others are praying and, in some cases, we see faces expressing withdrawal or indifference. In the sky, in the background, a group of witches can be seen flying.

This print can be read in two ways, in which the unifying element is appearance. On the one hand, it is a criticism of superstition, as can be seen in the manuscripts of Ayala and the National Library. However, the Prado Museum manuscript provides a second guideline for the interpretation of the engraving: "How often a ridiculous bug is suddenly transformed into a phantom that is nothing and appears to be a lot! So much can be the skill of a tailor and the foolishness of those who judge things by what they seem". In short, Goya censures those who rely on appearances without going into depth.

The Aragonese painter tackled this theme once again in engravings 66, Strange Devotion! and 67 This is No Less from the series The Disasters of War, in which he criticised the superciliousness and those who use sacred images to exalt their own image, to obtain a dimension and social projection which they do not really have.

A close analysis of the preparatory drawing for the engraving reveals modifications to the engraving designed to make the message of the print less obvious. Thus the artist concealed the clear reference to the monk by adding a topknot to the hood of the habit, which makes it look like a tied sack. He also sketched the witches flying in the sky that he developed in the print. In this way, the anti-clerical criticism is camouflaged under a scene of witchcraft.

One of the possible visual sources Goya could have drawn on for this image is the painting by Pierre Subleyras (Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, 1699-Rome, 1749) Charon Passing the Shadows (ca. 1735, Musée du Louvre, Paris), in which the Frenchman creates the spectral figures by means of an excellent panneggio work.