The drawing sixteen caricature heads and Goya's self-portrait will be the jewel of the next auction of the Ansorena Hall, which will take place on 16, 17 and 18 December. The work is made in dark sepia ink to pen and traces of black pencil on verjured paper. It contains sixteen caricature faces on one side, a self-portrait of the author on the other, and the pen inscription "by Goya 1798" at the bottom left, although it is not an artist's autograph.

The piece is 30 x 41 centimeters, was drawn around 1797-1978 and is in the hands of a particular Spanish collection. According to ABC, the exit price of the auction is 800,000 euros. "the drawing was given or sold by Goya to Mariana Waldstein, consort of Santa Cruz", relates the Goya Foundation in Aragon. He supported this theory Félix Boix, who at a conference of the Spanish Society of Friends of Art in Madrid in 1922 told that the drawing was made in a usual chat at Waldstein's house.

Goya drew sixteen caricaturized faces during one of the usual sit-ups at the house of consort Marina Waldstein.

According to other scholars of Goya, such as Loppez-Rey, Gudiol or Gassier and Wilson, in the Marquise's talks, the teacher, whose deafness prevented him from listening to what was said, was entertained by drawing caricatures of known or unknown characters in order to amuse the tertulians.

After the death of the consort, the work belonged to the Countess Consort of Scláfani, Fernando Sánchez de Toca y Muñoz, 2nd Duke of Vista-Alegre and II Marquis of Somio. The humanist and bibliophile Antonio Moreno Martín, of the Granata bookstore in Almería, finally bought the work from the last owner in 1963.

By decomposing the drawing, sixteen caricatures can be seen on a sheet divided in half: seven on one side and nine on the other, all men but one woman. The faces represent different types of characters, according to historian Arturo Ansón 's analysis. There are fat and old friars, a real official or an angry law professor and a fat man smiling "ridiculously".

Goya also drew a man with the face of an ape, a bearded man, a prepotent young man, an old man and an aristocrat or bourgeois with a prominent nose. On the self-portrait of the back of the leaf, Goya is shown with a sad face and careless appearance. Rasgos, as Ansón has pointed out, "own someone who is sick or convalescent of a disease", which has led him to think that Goya could draw it on his return from Cadiz to Madrid in April 1797.

All Goya in Basel (and a visit to the Fifth of the Deaf)

The drawing could be seen on display in the collection of Queen Maria Cristina de Bourbon in the Palacio de Sástago de Zaragoza in 2008 and in the Spanish drawing exhibition. From Renaissance to Goya. The December auction will include works by authors such as Bartolomé Carducho, Joan Reixach, Juan Sánchez Cotan, Lucas Jordan and Pablo Gargallo Catalán, among others.