General Folly, plate nine from The Proverbs
Medium
Etching and burnished aquatint on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.7 × 32.4 cm (8 9/16 × 12 13/16 in.); Plate: 24.5 × 35.2 cm (9 11/16 × 13 7/8 in.); Sheet: 33.2 × 49.6 cm (13 1/8 × 19 9/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
129716
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
General Folly is the most enigmatic print from one of Francisco de Goya’s most thematically obscure series. When it was finally published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando decades after the artist’s death—a delay presumably caused by the repressive political environment in Madrid during his lifetime—each sheet was given a Spanish proverb as its title, though the artist himself captioned them “follies.” This work was joined with the proverb “the claws of a cat and the dress of a d...
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...