Fool’s Folly, from Disparates
1816–19, published 1877
Medium
Etching and burnished aquatint in black on Japanese paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.2 × 32.4 cm (8 3/8 × 12 13/16 in.); Plate: 24.5 × 34.5 cm (9 11/16 × 13 5/8 in.); Sheet: 28.3 × 37.5 cm (11 3/16 × 14 13/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
27159
Art Historical Context
**Fool’s Folly, from *Disparates*** Francisco Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) Created between 1816 and 1819 but not published until 1877 *Fool’s Folly* is one of 22 enigmatic prints from Goya’s *Disparates* seriesalso known as *Proverbios*). In his late years, the Spanish master—deaf, isolated, and deeply disillusioned by war, political upheaval, and human folly—poured his darkest visions into these works. Unlike his earlier satirical *Los Caprichos*, the *Disparates* plunge into surreal, nightmarish absurdity, critiquing society’s madness through shadowy, dreamlike scenes that evoke proverb...
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...