Plate 15 from 'Los Caprichos': A pretty piece of advice (Bellos consejos)
Medium
Etching, burnished aquatint, burin
Dimensions
Plate: 8 1/2 × 5 15/16 in. (21.6 × 15.1 cm) Sheet: 12 1/16 x 7 13/16 in. (30.7 x 19.9 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Gift of Walter E. Sachs, 1916
Accession Number
16.4.10
Tags
Art Historical Context
Francisco de Goya y Luc, a pioneering Spanish artist bridging Enlightenment rationalism and Romanticism, created *Plate 15 from 'Los Caprichos': pretty piece of advice (Bellos consejos)* in 1799. This etching is part of his groundbreaking series of 80 prints, self-published amid Spain's turbulent late 18th-century society, rife with superstition, clerical influence, and social follies. Goya used these "caprices" to satirize human vices through dark humor and surreal imagery, withdrawing the edition shortly after release due to controversy. The title's ironic tone—"a pretty piece of advice"—hi...
About the Artist
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker considered the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Rising from modest provincial origins to become First Court Painter to Charles IV, Goya's career spanned the Enlightenment's optimism and the brutal Napoleonic invasion that shattered it. A mysterious illness in 1793 left him permanently deaf and ...