Neither more nor less, plate 41 from Los Caprichos
Medium
Etching and aquatint on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 18 × 13 cm (7 1/8 × 5 1/8 in.); Plate: 19.8 × 14.9 cm (7 13/16 × 5 7/8 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
123802
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
During 1797 to 1799, when Francisco de Goya was producing The Caprices, he served as court painter to Charles IV in Madrid. One cannot help but see this aquatint etching as a wry commentary on the main duty of his vocation—turning the oftentimes immoral and ignoble royals into fetching icons of morality and unfettered nobility. Here he compared his august sitter to a donkey instead—a common satirical trope in 18th-century Spanish literature—and, perhaps even more critically, himself to a monkey.
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...