They have flown

Although Goya created decorous portraits and religious paintings as a royal court painter during the reigns of Charles III and  Charles IV in Spain, he also concurrently undertook an ambitious body of satirical prints, these representing a lacerating critique of eighteenth-century Spanish society. The prints were first published in 1799, but Goya withdrew the series from sale after two days: he had been reported to the Inquisition. The series is now considered as amongst the most original and important prints in the Western print tradition.

Influenced by Enlightenment philosophy, Goya was a keen observer of human nature. In Los Caprichos (The Caprices), his series of eighty etchings, Goya targeted the greed and corruption of the aristocracy, the church and the judiciary, and highlighted the consequences of poor education and superstition in society. Some of Goya’s most pointed criticism focused on prostitution and relations between men and women.

This enigmatic print of a young woman, butterfly wings in her hair and with three crouching women keeping her afloat, has been identified as a portrait of the Duchess of Alba. Goya’s title gives a clue to the image: Volaverunt was a Latin word used in Spain at the time to mean something that had flown away or gone for good. The woman in the print has been interpreted as a symbol of fickleness and inconstancy. Goya and the Duchess of Alba had been in a relationship and were estranged when he made this work, circumstances that may account for the bitterness of its tone.

Maria Zagala, Curator of Prints, Drawings and Photographs