One another

Two characters ride on the shoulders of two others as if they were their horses. They take turns to place a pike on a wicker bull, which is held by a figure with his back to the viewer. The man on the left side of the engraving looks like a monk dressed in a habit and is mounted on an abbé wearing black clothes and buckled shoes. The other pair is composed of two noblemen, judging by their wigs and rich clothing with elegant, wide-cuffed jackets and buckled shoes. The latter are clearly reminiscent of those in Dream 16: Growing Up After Dying.

The Aragonese painter has distorted the features of the figures. The faces are cadaverous and emaciated, the eye sockets are strongly sunken and the bones of the faces are decisively marked. Through this monstrous physical appearance, it is possible that the artist is also trying to characterise them from a moral point of view.

In this engraving, Goya uses fine-grained aquatint in which the whites, achieved with the varnish reserves, and the soft burnishing of the men and the bull give a highly dramatic effect. He also uses the burin to finish off the ends of the spears.

The Prado manuscript describes this print as follows: "Thus goes the world, one mocks and bullfights another: he who used to be a bull now plays the knight in the bullring. Fortune directs the party and distributes the roles, according to the inconstancy of her whims". However, the one in the National Library comments: "The old fogies (Voltaire and Piron) are still fighting each other".

In this engraving Goya attacks the old social structure in which the nobility and the Church exploit the ignorant people, in the same way as he does in Caprice No. 42, You Who Cannot.

It is possible, as in other engravings in the series, that this image has more than one meaning and that, according to the manuscript in the National Library, Goya is referring to Voltaire (Paris, 1694-1778) and Alexis Piron (Dijon, 1689-Paris, 1773), between whom there was a rivalry that went beyond the literary.