When Day Breaks We Will Be Off, plate 71 from Los Caprichos
Medium
Etching and aquatint on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 17.3 × 12.7 cm (6 13/16 × 5 in.); Plate: 19.8 × 14.9 cm (7 13/16 × 5 7/8 in.); Sheet: 30.1 × 20.5 cm (11 7/8 × 8 1/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
123831
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Once again Goya features a malicious group of haggard women, usually interpreted as witches. They rest before daybreak to take flight, with or without broomsticks. Despite their caricatured expressions, their interactions can still be universally understood. The most prominent witch signals which direction they will head once the sun rises. She will presumably drag the group of children tied to her waist with her for evil purposes. Not unlike Goya’s earlier Caprichos plates, the figures of the w...
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...