Renounce the Friend Who Covers You with His Wings and Bites You with His Beak, plate five from Los Proverbios
Medium
Etching and aquatint on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.7 × 32.6 cm (8 9/16 × 12 7/8 in.); Plate: 24.5 × 35.3 cm (9 11/16 × 13 15/16 in.); Sheet: 33.2 × 49.7 cm (13 1/8 × 19 5/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
44900
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Here a strange animal, rather like the griffin of mythology, alights into the dark sky with a couple on its back. Night scenes play a key role in many of Goya’s prints, lending them an ominous tone. A critical component of the foreboding look of the prints is Goya’s masterful use of aquatint, a process involving a grainy ground of resin that prints a light-suffused darkness. In this scene, the night sky becomes a flat cosmic backdrop to the figure’s antics, as they seem to ignore the advice of t...
Art Historical Context
In etching and aquatint, a powerful winged creature fills the dark composition, seen from behind as it spreads enormous, textured wings across the picture plane. A second, smaller figure clings to its back, its head turned sharply toward the viewer with an open mouth that suggests both aggression and distress. The forms emerge from deep shadows through dense cross-hatching and velvety aquatint tones, creating a sense of turbulent movement against an inky background. Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes made this print as plate five of his series *Los Proverbios* between 1815 and 1824. Working in etching and aquatint on ivory wove paper, Goya explored the deceptive nature of human relationships, here visualizing the proverb’s warning about false friends who offer protection only to harm. The image’s stark contrasts and fantastical creatures reflect the artist’s late-career interest in the irrational forces that shape society.
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...