The Madhouse

Goya worked on this in the years around the Peninsular War, when a French army had occupied Spain and the country was tearing itself apart. He had seen the inside of a Zaragoza asylum years before, and he came back to that memory now, painting a windowless vaulted room where the only light drops from one barred opening high in the wall. The inmates below act out their delusions. One wears a feathered headdress and thinks himself a king, another blesses the room like a bishop, a third fights an invisible enemy. Goya was going deaf and increasingly withdrawn while he made pictures like this, and he kept them largely to himself. He painted the whole scene on a small wooden panel, barely two feet across.