Disorderly Folly, plate seven from The Proverbs
1815/24, published 1864
Medium
Etching, aquatint and drypoint on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.8 × 32.5 cm (8 5/8 × 12 13/16 in.); Plate: 24.5 × 35.5 cm (9 11/16 × 14 in.); Sheet: 33.1 × 49.6 cm (13 1/16 × 19 9/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
129718
Art Historical Context
**Disorderly F**, plate seven from Francisco Goya's *The Proverbs* series (also known as *Los Proios*), captures the artist's biting satire on human absurdity. Created between 1815 and 1824 but published posthumously in 1864, this etching reflects Goya's late-career preoccupation with folly, vice, and societal decay. As a cornerstone of Romantic printmaking, Goya's work critiques the irrationality of Spanish life, drawing from proverbs to depict chaotic scenes of indulgence and madness—here evoking "disorderly folly" through shadowy figures in disarray. Goya masterfully combined etching for p...
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...