Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Painter, plate one from Los Caprichos
Medium
Etching, aquatint, drypoint and burin in black on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 13.7 × 11.2 cm (5 7/16 × 4 7/16 in.); Plate: 21.7 × 15.2 cm (8 9/16 × 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
62560
Art Historical Context
Behold Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Painter, the striking inaugural plate from Goya's revolutionary series *Los Caprich* (1797–99). This self-portrait captures the Spanish master at his easel, his intense gaze piercing through the shadows, announcing his bold entry into a world of satire and fantasy. Created amid Spain's turbulent Enlightenment era, when Goya—recently deafened by illness—served as court painter to the monarchy, the series of 80 prints skewers the superstitions, follies, and hypocrisies of 18th-century Spanish society, from clergy corruption to aristocratic excess. Goya's virtu...
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...