The Prisoners (Goya)

The Prisoners is a series of three etchings by Francisco de Goya, depicting imprisoned men with indistinct faces, bound with leg irons in stress positions. The prints are not dated, but they are believed to have been made between 1810 and 1815, around the time Goya started his print series The Disasters of War. Political considerations made it impossible for Goya to publish the prints during his lifetime.

Although they do not share the format, paper, or style of The Disasters of War, similarities of the etching technique date them to a similar period. Copies of the three engravings, together with a fourth Goya print The Colossus were kept together in an album of working impressions of The Disasters of War owned by Goya's friend Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, with the three prints of The Prisoners prints glued in rather than bound with the others. After Ceán Bermúdez died in 1829, the album was later in the collection of Tomás Harris and since 1975 it has been held by the British Museum in London. These prints have titles added by Goya himself in pencil, but individual prints are sometimes known as The Little Prisoner. Goya's titles for the three etchings are criticisms of judicial torture.