‘Feminine Folly’ from the ‘Disparates’ (Follies / Irrationalities)

Description

In Feminine Folly, Francisco Goya shows women holding a blanket beneath figures tossed into the air. The familiar outline of a communal game becomes strange through the participants’ expressions, the airborne bodies and the inclusion of a donkey. The broad cloth creates a strong horizontal shape, while the bare setting gives the upward movement an uncanny isolation.

Created around 1815–1819 and first published with the Disparates in 1864, the print reworks a motif Goya had treated more playfully in his tapestry design The Straw Man. Here the game’s rules no longer offer a reassuring explanation. Etched detail and aquatint shadow make the scene feel physical yet dreamlike. Rather than supplying a fixed moral, Goya lets a recognizable social pastime become an image of instability, exposure and the unsettling power of a group.