Pesadilla

Dreams and nightmares are a leitmotif of Goya's art. Toward the end of his life, he drew increasingly for his own pleasure, executing eight albums lettered A through H and variously named. Album E, the Black Border Album, is the largest in format and the most easily recognizable. This drawing depicts a disheveled woman astride a flying bull. Still entangled in her bedding, she screams in terror, her eyes bulging. While the image of a woman and bull traditionally personified the European continent, Goya's pair seems to personify the turmoil in Spain following the Peninsular War. --Exhibition Label, from "Visions and Nightmares: Four Centuries of Spanish Drawings"