Witches’ Sabbath (Spanish: El Aquelarre). Francisco Goya, 1819 - 1823 Madrid. Oil on mural transferred to canvas, 43 cm x 30 cm (17 in x 12 in). Museo del Prado, Madrid, Spain.
Goya’s ‘Black Paintings’ series includes a total of fourteen frescos that were added to walls in dining and sitting rooms of the Quinta de Sordo (Deaf Man's Villa) where Goya lived at the time. The mural was removed from the property in 1874 and transferred onto canvas painting. Witches Sabbath (El Aquelarre) depicts a group of women and babies gathering around a large goat. The goat’s shape is entirely animal, but it holds an anthropomorphic sitting posture. Its horns are adorned with a crown of green fig leaves, and its limbs are spread open towards the group.
The goat's upper left limb points towards the only smiling woman looking at the sky with her child in arms, and whose look seems to be the healthiest depicted of all. In contrast, the goat’s bottom left limb points towards the oldest woman; the woman dressed in black is offering a skeleton child to the goat. Next to her in the foreground, the back of a woman with a yellow dress and headscarf covers the entirety of her body and face, while a pair of baby legs are escaping out her coverage. At the end of the row, there are two women. One woman is in a white dress looking towards the youngest woman and behind her rests the skeleton of a dead child. At the end of the circle, to the right side of the goat, an uncanny looking woman with an uncovered torso, holds an awkward posture almost like trying to take something from the other woman’s hands. Right behind her is a stick anchored to the ground holding the little bodies of hanged children. In the background, mountains merge with dreamlike feminine faces under a black sky, flying bats, and an inverted crescent moon. This and other paintings from the ‘Black Paintings’ series have been on view since 1889 after the Baron Emile d’Erlanger acquired “La Quinta” and donated them to the State. Most of the paintings from this series are currently found in the Museo del Prado’s collection in Madrid.