Goya's Witches and Old Women

***** Goya's 'The Witches and Old Women Album' at the Courthauld Gallery is similar in scale to the recent Schiele exhibition and is no less spectacular. Containing 23 drawings from 1819-23, the exhibition organisers present a masterclass in 'lend me that piece of art please' diplomacy. Witches play with castanets and tambourines (the slit in its skin symbolic of a dark eroticism), men and fools are bewitched and old an old woman devourers a child that is all too reminiscent of Goya's 'Satan Devouring his Son' in the Prado. These are unforgettable images.

Goya's technical ability, and deft touches with watercolour, also resonate in every work. Frail figures are thus given an unquestionable vitality. Rojas' Celestina appears in a number of the works, whispering to her prostitutes and symbolic of the depth to which humans might go to to survive; perhaps even finding enjoyment in the depravity of it all. One remembers that, in may ways, Goya's deafness defined his later life. Work however sustained him and here we see images that scream out the unmistakable sound of genius.