If he will be resurrected?

The same glowing woman who was being buried in print no. 79, Truth Died, lies in the foreground in this print. The female figure is awakening from her sleep and coming back to life. On the right, where Justice was in print no. 79, Goya has placed a monk holding a stone in one hand and a small trumpet in the other. Next to him is an animal-headed figure with feline features, although it could perhaps be a dog, which in Goya's iconography alludes to greed. Behind him are some figures that resemble vampires. All of them are preparing, in a somewhat threatening attitude, for the awakening of the woman in the engraving, as if they see this as a danger. Only one female figure, strongly illuminated by the halo of light of the woman who is about to be resurrected, seems hopeful.

Various explanations have been put forward for this engraving. In principle, it could be thought that Goya is raising in this image the question of what would happen if the Constitution were to be reintroduced, what all the figures who feel threatened by this possibility might do and how they would defend themselves in such a circumstance. Another interpretation of this print is that the Aragonese painter knew that the Constitution would be reintroduced during the second constitutional period, so he accentuated the verb in the title as if he were certain of the imminence of this event.

Goya may have drawn on various sources of inspiration to create this image. It is possible that the painter was familiar with Psalm 85:11 of the Bible, which states: "Truth shall spring out of the earth; and justice shall look down from heaven". He probably also read the work by Antonio Bernabéu, published in 1820, Spain's Fortunate Spain through the Life of the Constitution and the Death of the Inquisition, in which he wrote: "At last the slumbering reason has awakened and opened the way to the empire of the lights; but it would please God that all nations, sharing abundantly in its salutary influence, had finally shaken off the odious yoke imposed on them by the dark and implacable tyranny of superstition".

Nor should we exclude the possibility that the artist was inspired, as he does in other engravings in this series, by the work of Giambattista Casti (Viterbo or Acquapendente, 1724-Paris, 1803) Gli animali parlanti (1801), in which the return of Truth is announced in a halo of light at the end of the book.

This engraving can be interpreted as a positive contribution to other prints from the Caprichos empháticos in which circumstances that do not augur well are depicted, as can be seen in engraving no. 69, Nothing, It Will Say or in the one that precedes the one we are dealing with here, no. 79, Truth Died.  Jesusa Vega points out that this image clearly shows the secularisation of a sacred theme which, in this case, is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. In this sense, we could speak of a return to engraving no. 1, Sad forebodings of what is to happen, in which the same thing is done with the prayer in the Garden of Olives. This aspect leads us to believe that Goya initially intended this print to be the last in the series.

This engraving can be related to other works by Goya, especially Capricho no. 43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, in which a positive figure is stalked by a multitude of disturbing and threatening beings.