Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes - Yard with Madmen
- Title: Yard with Madmen (Corral del locos)
- Artist: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1557-1640)
- Date: 1794
- Medium: Oil on tin-plated iron
- Dimensions: 43 × 31 cm
- Location: Meadows Museum, Dallas (TX), USA
- Seen: at Bozar in Brusells in October 2025
- Image source: Roland Tricot
The painting is like a window on a grim little theater of human misery. In "Yard with Madmen", Goya shows us an enclosed courtyard of a mental asylum: high walls made of big stones, a slice of sky, and, on the ground, a scattering of half-naked men in torn clothes. There’s no furniture, no comfort—just bare stone and bodies. The space feels cramped, airless, like there’s no way out for anyone inside.
Each figure seems lost in his own world. One man gestures wildly with his arms as if preaching; another crouches in a corner, hunched in on himself. A figure in the foreground lunges forward, almost animal-like. Two naked men are wrestling while fully dressed man, probably a warden, is whipping them. The characters are drawn as tortured men with their twisted backs, tense muscles, slack mouths. You sense agitation, fear, and confusion.
The light is harsh and selective. It falls in from above, striking a shoulder here, a bare back there, leaving other faces in shadow. The colors are earthy and subdued—dull browns, grays, sickly skin tones—so nothing distracts from the emotional violence of the scene. There’s a figure in the background, possibly a guard or attendant, almost swallowed by the gloom, which reinforces the impression of control and surveillance rather than care.
This painting is about how society treats those it considers “mad.” Goya isn’t mocking these men; he seems to be accusing the world that keeps them locked up in such conditions. Painted after a serious illness of his own, it feels like a glimpse into the darker corners of the human mind—and into institutions that were more about containment and punishment than healing.
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