Disparate Femenino (Feminine Folly) by Francisco Goya (Interpretation and Analysis)

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Disparate Femenino
Source: Museo Prado

If you’ve been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably know that Francisco Goya is my favorite artist. Goya is famous for his many prints, and his print series Los Disparates is perhaps his most enigmatic and interesting of all the series he produced.

Disparate Femenino (which translates as Feminine Folly) is usually considered to be the first print in this series. It depicts a group of women tossing two dolls in the air while a man and a donkey lay in the blanket. The print is similar to a tapestry cartoon (a painting created as a model for a textile tapestry) that Goya created nearly twenty years before.

The tapestry cartoon, entitled The Straw Manikin, depicts four women tossing a manikin in a blanket, referencing a popular carnival game. However, there are deeper implications here. As the Prado Museum notes, “its carnival origins are visible in the use of masks and joking, but the blanket-tossing of a doll is used here by Goya as a clear allegory of women’s domination of men.”

In Disparate Femenino these undertones emerge more clearly. This print has a distinctly sinister aura. The women’s expressions are difficult to read, but lack the open joviality seen in The Straw Manikin. As the Prado Museum explains, Disparate Femenino could be an allegory of the relationship between men and women. However, in the context of Los Disparates, the print also takes on supernatural connotations. Throughout the history of European culture, women have been traditionally regarded as the harbingers or shapers of fate, from the three Fates of Greek mythology to the Norns of Norse mythology. Goya’s Disparate Femenino can be read as one such mystical representation of the arbitrary currents that shape all human lives. 

The Straw Manikin
Source: Museo Prado

Disclaimer: I’m not an art historian or an expert on this topic. The above is my opinion, based on my interpretation of my foreknowledge of art and history. If I’ve done any additional research, I’ll note it above.

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