You who cannot

In the middle of the field, two peasants carry two donkeys on their shoulders, looking happy, while the farmers' faces reflect the dejection and weariness of such a heavy burden.

The aquatint forms a gradient in the sky that goes from the darkest at the top to the lightest at the bottom. Goya has also used the burnisher to create the effect of light on a low horizon.

This image is explained with great clarity in the manuscript in the National Library, which reads: "The poor and useful classes of society are those who carry the donkeys to bed, or bear the full weight of the contributions of the state". This interpretation ties in with the Report of the Economic Society of Madrid to the Royal and Supreme Council of Castile on the agrarian law that Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos (Gijón, 1744-Puerto de Vega, Navia, 1811) published in 1795 in which he comments on the circumstances in which Spanish peasants found themselves: "Has it not been enough to aggravate their condition by imposing on them the taxes and services that the clergy, the nobility and other less respectable classes were dispensed with? (...) The heaviest and most costly pensions are daily being levied on the farmer as a result of the exemptions granted to other crafts and occupations. The quintas, the bagages, the lodgings, the collection of taxes and stamped paper, and all the council charges burden the unhappy farmer, while the individuals of other classes and professions are exempted from them with a generous hand. Cattle-breeding, carting, and the breeding of mares and colts have obtained them, as if these daughters or servants of agriculture were more worthy of favour than their mother and mistress. The employees of the royal hacienda, the capos de ronda, the guards, the tobacco, card and gunpowder tobacconists, the salt industry employees, and an incredibly large number of other jobs are granted an exemption not granted to the farm labourer".

In this print, the artist captures a vision of the world in which everything seems to work the other way round; it is no longer the men who ride on the backs of the donkeys, but the donkeys who carry them on their backs. Anna Pou points out that this vision has its origins in Aesop's fable of The Donkey and the Miller, which was widely disseminated in Europe throughout the 16th century.

It is also likely that the Aragonese painter had seen pre-revolutionary French prints in which the image of an animal on a person's shoulders was used to censure the enormous weight that people were forced to carry. These images were also valid for our country where, as we have seen, there was a significant increase in taxes to finance the wars and to pay for the privileges of the upper classes and the clergy.

Another hypothetical visual source from which Goya could have drawn inspiration is the coloured engraving by André Basset entitled A faut esperere q'eu se jeu la finira bentot (private collection).