Menippus
Medium
Etching with engraved inscription on laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 28.5 × 19 cm (11 1/4 × 7 1/2 in.); Plate: 30.5 × 22 cm (12 1/16 × 8 11/16 in.); Sheet: 42.5 × 30.2 cm (16 3/4 × 11 15/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
38167
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Goya made these two etchings after Velázquez’s portrait pair reenvisioning the ancient writers Menippus (a satirical playwright) and Aesop (a storyteller). Both men were initially slaves, but became free men. They both appear in the paintings holding books or standing near piles of them, although none of their original writings have survived. Like the portraits of the court dwarves, Goya etched these thinkers on a smaller size sheet of paper than Velázquez’s portraits of contemporary nobles (and...
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...