Monk Talking to an Old Woman is a particularly disturbing work by Spanish master Francisco Goya (1746-1828) painted in 1825 towards the end of his ‘Black Period’ and therefore is suitably colored in shadowy and foreboding tones.
The monk seems to be sharing with the woman perhaps the dangers of sin or damnation and the contagion of fear seems to spread from his open mouth into the eyes of the horrified woman and out of the picture space into the world of the viewer.
Francisco Goya’s Monk Talking to an Old Woman, or Fraile hablando con una vieja in his native Spanish, is in the Princeton University Art Museum in New Jersey, USA.