To Go Amongst the Branches, i.e. to talk through one's hat, plate three from Los Proverbios

This print belongs to a series Goya began in his late 70s but never finished before his move to France in 1824. Titled Los disparates, which roughly translates to “absurdities,” the series includes darkly enigmatic images at once sympathetic and satirical, each one suggesting human folly. Here a group of figures of various ages huddles like a flock of birds on a giant, leafless branch. The original Spanish title of the print, Andarse por las ramas, literally means to walk between branches, but is used figuratively to mean something like the English expression “to beat around the bush.”