To Go Amongst the Branches, i.e. to talk through one's hat, plate three from Los Proverbios

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FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

This print belongs to a series Goya began in his late 70s but never finished before his move to France in 1824. Titled Los disparates , which roughly translates to “absurdities,” the series includes darkly enigmatic images at once sympathetic and satirical, each one suggesting human folly. Here a group of figures of various ages huddles like a flock of birds on a giant, leafless branch. The original Spanish title of the print, Andarse por las ramas , literally means to walk between branches, but is used figuratively to mean something like the English expression “to beat around the bush.”

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