You who cannot

Capricho 42 'You who cannot'

In a world ostensibly turned upside down, donkeys ride humans. Spur-wearing asses master their human slaves, parasites upon their strength and energy, a double-edged satire upon class and power. There must, after all, be some moment of choice in taking up or retaining the burden carried. Why not slough it off?

But such insults could not go out into the world without the ground being prepared for them, without a defence being laid first: appeal to the vanity of the powerful while declaring that it is all mere invention anyway.

Since the greater part of the objects represented in this work are imaginary, it will not be rash to hope that its defects will obtain, perhaps, ample indulgence among the intelligent.

Considering that the artist has not followed the example of others, nor has found it possible to copy nature, although the imitation of nature is as difficult as it is admirable when it is achieved, one must allow that he will still deserve some esteem who, departing from her entirely, has been obliged to exhibit to the eye forms and attitudes which hitherto have existed only in the human mind bedimmed and confused by want of enlightenment or excited by the violence of unbridled passions.

 (Goya's advertisement of February 6, 1799 in the Diario de Madrid)