Plate 12 from ‘Los Caprichos’: Out hunting for teeth (A caza de dientes.)

Description

A woman reaches toward the mouth of a hanging corpse, turning the search for teeth into a scene of fearful resolve. Francisco Goya’s Out Hunting for Teeth brings superstition into direct contact with death. The figure’s action is purposeful, but the object of that purpose makes the encounter disturbing rather than reassuring.

Plate 12 of Los Caprichos, published in 1799, uses etching and burnished aquatint to make the woman’s proximity to the body emotionally immediate. Goya presents belief as something capable of overcoming ordinary revulsion without necessarily producing wisdom. The title describes the activity with a disconcerting matter-of-factness. Its force lies in this collision of practical effort and irrational expectation, where the pursuit of a supposed remedy draws a living person into an intimate encounter with a dead one.