A way of flying

Men fly on mechanical devices with large bat-like wings, which they operate with their hands and feet by means of ropes. On their skulls they wear a large bird's head, which serves as a prow orientation or simply as a symbol to emulate the freedom of birds. The group is made up of five flying men. One of them, in the foreground, bends his legs to set the contraption in motion. The rest are distributed in the space with great harmony and proportion.

The characters fly in an immense, boundless night sky, soaring away into mysterious depths and heights. In this way, man is liberated and moves through infinite space with great freedom, an achievement achieved by human effort. Through the use of reason, man has invented an ingenuity that allows him to fly and conquer space where he achieves complete freedom, fulfilling his long-held dream of soaring the skies. Leonardo da Vinci had already envisaged this with mechanical devices very similar to those presented by Goya.

It is thought that this print was never intended by Goya as part of the Follies series, as it was bound in an album of Bullfighting that the painter gave to Ceán Bermúdez. Furthermore, there are other indications that it was not intended as an integral part of the series. It manifests a positive vision that is not typical of the Follies, showing man as responsible for the achievement of flight. This optimism is most evident in the state proofs without aquatint, in which the dark sky is not yet present. It is possible that Goya devised the daytime print, as the preparatory drawing for it is. When the aquatint was applied to the San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts edition in 1864, its appearance became much more sombre and in keeping with the spirit of the series, to which it would have been incorporated at a later date. The fact that the manuscript title on the state proofs does not include the word follie, as is usual in the series, also seems to exclude the initial belonging of this print to the series.