Merry Folly, from Disparates, published as plate 12 in Los Proverbios

In his early 70s Goya made a series of enigmatic prints whose titles and imagery have long been the subject of debate. Printed four decades after the artist’s death, the Spanish Royal Academy of Fine Arts devised the title Los Proverbios (Proverbs) in an attempt to assign a theme to the group. A handful of early trial proofs were later discovered on which the artist had inscribed Disparate, which roughly translates as folly, nonsense, absurdity, or fantasy.As he aged Goya began to depict elderly people with greater frequency. In this print, three old men with castanets, one slightly aroused with bulging trousers, cavort with three shapely young women.