Francisco Goya (1746–1828) was a master of etching who produced four large series of etchings and aquatints. This print belongs to the earliest set. Goya often combined aquatint with line etching and in this print also used some drypoint.
Goya was one of the first to use the aquatint process as an artistic medium rather than a means of reproducing other art forms. Aquatint was often printed in colour or hand-coloured to resemble the wash drawings it was developed to reproduce but with its dark background, this aquatint was evidently intended to be printed in monochrome. Goya embraced the tonal possibilities of the process, using stopping out varnish to make parts of the plate acid resistant so that they remained white in the finished image, as seen in the illuminated arms of the figure in the foreground.