Truth, Time and History

Goya painted this while Spain was coming apart around him, in the years when Napoleon's armies moved into the country and the old order collapsed. A luminous young woman holds a book and steps forward, led by winged, aged Time whose hourglass has just been turned over, the sand starting again. Scholars still argue over exactly when he made it, with dates spread across more than a decade, and over who she is. Some read her as Truth, some as Spain herself, some tie her to the liberal Constitution of 1812 that briefly abolished the Inquisition. The figure recording it all at the side is History, whose job in these old allegories was to make men immortal by writing down what they did.