Gift to the teacher

A group of sinister figures pay obeisance to a figure on the right-hand side of the engraving. The figure gazes down at the figure and, although his head is human, his body is that of a billy goat and is covered with hair. The sinister witches who worship him have aged and deformed faces and have brought him a human foetus as a gift. It is a coven, which is the Basque term for the places where witches held their meetings and performed their rituals.

Goya has only applied an intermediate tone of aquatint over the etching in this print. The whites of the chest of the great witch, the face of the witch carrying the foetus and the figure in the foreground contrast with the darkness of the rest of the print.

The explanations provided by the manuscripts indicate that this is a group of nuns and friars expressing their gratitude to the master who has taught them what they know.

The painter unequivocally criticised superstition and acts of witchcraft, as he did in the paintings for the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, which may predate the Caprices series slightly. This theme would continue to interest him throughout his career, when he would return to it with different, perhaps more extreme, expressive mechanisms.