Hunting for teeth

In the centre of the composition is a man who has just been hanged, hanging handcuffed by a rope. In front of him, a young woman covers her face with a handkerchief in a gesture of horror, while she puts her hand in his mouth and tries to pull out his teeth.

The scene is very dark, so it would seem to be an event that is taking place at night. Goya has applied aquatint profusely over the entire surface of the background and has left the upper part of the hanged man's body and his face blank, as well as the young woman's handkerchief and her hand, with which she pulls his teeth out of his mouth.

This engraving is explained in the three manuscripts of which we are aware. In the Ayala manuscript it is said that "the hanged man's teeth are very effective for spells, what a woman in love is capable of! The one in the Prado Museum  points out that "the teeth of hanged men are very effective for spells; without this ingredient nothing useful can be done. It is a pity that the vulgar believe such nonsense". Finally, the meaning of this print is referred to in the manuscript of the National Library: "To get her own way, especially if she is in love, she is capable of pulling out the teeth of a hanged man".

In this engraving, Goya censures the superstition that prompted the young woman to try to extract the corpse's teeth because it was popularly believed that they were useful for love spells. He depicts the scene in an unvarnished, frontal manner, capturing the gruesomeness of the act. This kind of superstition is also reflected in Act VII of the Tragicomedy of Calixto and Melibea, specifically when Celestina tells Parmeno's mother: "Seven teeth he took out of a hanged man with a pair of eyebrow pliers, while I took off his shoes".

Episodes of this nature were also recorded by Leandro Fernández de Moratín (Madrid, 1760-Paris, 1828) in the Inquisition's Auto of Faith on witchcraft held in Logroño in 1610. This work must have been well known to Francisco de Goya, as it had been one of the sources of inspiration for his painting Aquelarre, painted for the Duke and Duchess of Osuna. Moreover, this literary work was in the aristocrats' library, according to the inventory made of it in 1823.