Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) placing their faith in ghouls, quack doctors and tyrants. Goya had used witchcraft imagery in his 1797–98 "Caprichos" print series, and in his similarly titled 1789 painting "Witches' Sabbath". In both the 1789 and 1822 Sabbath pictures, the Devil is presented as a goat surrounded by a ring of terrified women. The earlier painting uses witchcraft imagery in a manner that inverts the order of traditional Christian iconography. The goat extends his left rather than right hoof towards the child, the quarter moon faces out at the left hand corner of the canvas. These inversions may be metaphor for the
Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) The paintings were completed in secret: he did not title any of the works or leave a record of his intentions in creating them. Absent of fact, "Witches' Sabbath" is generally seen by art historians as a satire on the credulity of the age, a condemnation of superstition and the witch trials of the Spanish Inquisition. As with the other works in the group, "Witches' Sabbath" reflects its painter's disillusionment and can be linked thematically to his earlier etching "The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters" as well as the "Disasters of War" print series, another bold political statement published only