Out Hunting for Teeth, plate twelve from Los Caprichos
Medium
Etching, burnished aquatint and burin on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 18.4 × 11.9 cm (7 1/4 × 4 11/16 in.); Plate: 22 × 15.2 cm (8 11/16 × 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
123773
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Goya produced his Caprices, a series of 88 prints, between 1797 and 1799. Here, he satirizes love’s ability to drive a person to foolishness. A terrorized young woman stands on her toes on a ledge. With one hand she shields herself with a handkerchief, and with the other she pulls teeth from a hanged corpse, which she will use to cast a love spell. The tonal values achieved by aquatint highlight the lifeless body’s countenance as well as the young woman’s handkerchief. Goya may be referring to a...
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...