The Bewitched Man

The Bewitched Man, also called The Devil's Lamp and catalogued by the National Gallery as A Scene from El Hechizado por Fuerza ('The Forcibly Bewitched'), is an oil on canvas by Francisco Goya painted around 1798; the small picture, 42.5 × 30.8 cm, is in the National Gallery, London (NG1472).

Goya took the scene from a satirical comedy by Antonio de Zamora (1660–1727), first performed in 1698. Its hero, the timid priest Don Claudio, is being frightened into marrying Doña Leonora: he has been persuaded that the slave Lucía has bewitched him and that he will live only as long as the lamp in her room stays lit. Goya shows him, wide-eyed and with a hand over his mouth, hurriedly pouring oil into a lamp held out by a horned, ram-like figure. Donkeys dancing on their hind legs are painted on the wall behind him, a common emblem of foolishness. On a pale slab at the corner the letters LAM and DESCO begin the words lámpara descomunal, 'monstrous lamp', which Claudio cries out in the play. The stage edge at the bottom and the theatrical lighting make clear that this is a performance, and the exaggerated pose was meant to make viewers laugh at his credulity.

The canvas is one of six small cabinet pictures of witches and sorcery that Goya made for the Duke and Duchess of Osuna, his most loyal patrons, to hang in their country house at the Alameda de Osuna outside Madrid. An invoice dated 27 June 1798 charges the duke 6,000 reales for the six works, which were probably exhibited together at the Real Academia de San Fernando in 1799. Other scenes in the group include Witches' Sabbath and Witches' Flight. The set shares themes with Los Caprichos, the etchings Goya was producing at the same time, which mocked superstition and credulity.

The Osuna collection was auctioned in Madrid in 1896, and the six paintings were dispersed; this one entered the National Gallery. It was lent to the Munch Museum in Oslo for the exhibition Goya and Munch: Modern Prophecies in 2023–24.