Merry folly

Six characters, three men and three women, dance in a circle to the sound of castanets. They dress like majos, but do not possess their youthful grace. The male characters look like old men with heavy, slow movements. The one on the far left dances like a monkey, the one next to him is bald and the one in the middle seems to suffer from a kind of dwarfism. The women are dressed in rich costumes. One of them also wears a crown on her head like those worn by the dead. The two on the right are younger but expressionless, with mechanical movements like those of the other figures. They dance on a bare, desolate stage, with no spatial reference, only a kind of horizon line.

The print is related to The Dance on the Banks of the Manzanares (1777), but what was joy and joviality in the tapestry cartoon has become grotesque and bitter here, so that the title is loaded with irony. In this print, the characters dance in an artificial, catatonic manner, with clumsy, stiff movements. They seem unaware of each other, they dance together but each of them is immersed in his own world.

Some popular dances of the 18th century were charged with eroticism. This may be the reason why one of the men has a considerably swollen crotch and it would also explain the deformities of some of the characters, produced by lust, as well as the fact that the women dress like courtesans.

Medium-toned aquatint that darkens as it ascends towards the top of the sky, where the burnisher is applied. The drypoint is used on the head of the man in the foreground and on his jacket.

The preparatory drawing for the present print is preserved, also titled Merry folly.