Los caprichos
Los caprichos is an 80-print etching series by Francisco Goya, published in 1799, that satirizes Spanish society, superstition, and human folly.
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters: Plate 43 of Los caprichos, showing a sleeping figure surrounded by bats, owls, and a lynx. This famous plate gives the series its most enduring image of reason besieged by irrational forces.
Etching: A printmaking process in which acid bites lines into a metal plate through a protective ground. Etching supplied the linear foundation for the series’ densely worked images.
Francisco Goya: A Spanish painter and printmaker whose work spans court portraiture, social satire, and scenes of war and suffering. Goya conceived, etched, and published the series.
Disasters of War: Goya’s later series of prints depicting the violence and suffering of the Peninsular War. It carries the printmaking and critical force of Los caprichos into the representation of war.
Que se rompe la cuerda: Plate 77 of Los caprichos, depicting a high-ranking cleric balanced on a tightrope. Its precarious clerical figure extends the series’ satire of institutional authority.
Aquatint: A printmaking process that creates areas of tonal shading by etching a granular resin ground into a metal plate. Goya used aquatint to build the dramatic shadows that shape many plates.
Enlightenment in Spain: An eighteenth-century movement to promote reason, education, and reform within Spanish society and institutions. Its reformist debates help explain the series’ attacks on superstition and ignorance.
Black Paintings: A group of dark, intensely personal paintings Goya made on the walls of his house late in life. Their visions of fear and irrationality deepen themes already present in the prints.
The Chinchillas: Plate 50 of Los caprichos, showing figures immobilized by padded clothing and closed eyes. The plate makes inherited privilege and intellectual passivity targets of ridicule.
Chiaroscuro: The use of strong contrasts between light and dark to create volume and dramatic effect. The series’ stark lighting directs attention and intensifies its scenes of menace.