Despite advances in science during the 1700s, superstition and sorcery remained popular in Spain. One such belief was that the teeth of a hanged man were an important ingredient in love potions. The woman shields her face as she reaches into the man’s mouth but the appalling reality of her theft is exposed by a bright streak of moonlight.

Goya’s masterful use of aquatint—a relatively new printmaking technique in his time—is evident here in the subtle shifts in tone that heighten the shadowy and ambiguous setting of the ghastly crime.