And So Was His Grandfather, plate 39 from Los Caprichos
Medium
Aquatint on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 20.2 × 13.9 cm (8 × 5 1/2 in.); Plate: 21.5 × 15.1 cm (8 1/2 × 6 in.); Sheet: 30.1 × 20.7 cm (11 7/8 × 8 3/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
123800
Art Historical Context
**And So Was His Grandfather (Y era su abuelo), Plate 39 from *Los Caprichos*** Francisco Goya's *Los Caprichos* (1799), a groundbreaking series of 80 prints, boldly critiques the superstitions, follies, and social ills of late 18th-century Spain Created amid the Enlightenment's waning light and the Inquisition's shadow, Plate 39 satirizes quackery and inherited madness. The title wryly suggests a doctor's diagnosis: the patient's lunacy mirrors his grandfather's, underscoring Goya's disdain for pseudoscience and rigid traditions that perpetuated ignorance. Goya, a master of Romanticism'...
About the Artist
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in the small Aragonese village of Fuendetodos, Spain, to José Benito de Goya, a master gilder, and Gracia de Lucientes. The fourth of six children in a modest lower-middle-class family, Goya received a basic education before beginning his artistic training at age 14 under the local painter José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza, where he sp...