Soo… I was deep in my research of the Peninsular War, Dos de Mayo and Francisco de Goya’s life during the war, as he is actually a very important character in the story I mentioned in an earlier post asking for advice on sources.
Btw, the story used to be called The House of the Deaf Man, but I’ve since changed it to “By the Maestro’s Side” for REASONS ™️.
(Also, yes, I am the kind of person working on several pieces of writing at once and I don’t forget them, I promise.)
Anyway, I was researching Goya’s illness and subsequent deafness (he went completely deaf in the 1790s, causing a drastic change in his art and personality) and I found this:
This is an etching from 1812 attributed to Goya, and it’s called “A Study of Hands”, which might seem like just a study done by the painter because hands are a fucking bitch to paint.
However, take a look at this:
This is the Spanish dactylology alphabet (spelling of words via signs). Notice the similarities?
While pop culture tends to portray Goya as verbal and reading lips (which is much harder to do in reality btw) whenever he is portrayed in literature or in film, I think the etching is a bit of a window into his ways of communicating, or at least into his exploration of the options of communication.
My research has, in fact, yielded some information about Goya using dactylology historically on multiple occasions, aside from reading lips and writing. And this has given me ideas for some plot points too.
But yeah! Glad to have discovered this etching and take a deeper dive into the history of sign language and means of communication.
