In 1799, a collection of eighty prints of whimsical subjects etched by the painter Francisco de Goya, who was 53 years old, was put up for sale. Through ridicule, extravagance, and fantasy, these engravings criticized the society of Spain at the time. To understand the genesis of the
Caprichos, it is necessary to consider the years preceding them. In the 1780s, Goya began to interact with some of the most important intellectuals in the country,
Gaspar Melchor de Jovellanos,
Juan Meléndez Valdés,
Leandro Fernández de Moratín and
Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez, who introduced him to the ideals of the Enlightenment. He shared their opposition to religious fanaticism, superstition, the Inquisition, and religious orders. They aspired to fairer laws and an educational system based on the individual. In 1788,
Charles IV came to the throne. After the coronation of Charles IV, Goya portrayed the king with his wife, Queen
María Luisa, subsequently being named
Court Painter. The period of the
French Revolution had repercussions in Spain. Charles IV suppressed Enlightenment ideas and removed the most advanced thinkers from public life. Goya's enlightened friends were persecuted, and the threat of the prison of Cabarrús, as well as the exile of Jovellanos, must have worried Goya. On a trip from Madrid to Seville in January 1793, Goya fell ill, perhaps from an attack of
apoplexy. To convalesce, he was taken to
Cádiz, to the home of his enlightened friend Sebastián Martínez, availing of the good doctors of the Faculty and the benevolent climate of the city. Though it is unclear what illness Goya had, several hypotheses have been suggested:
venereal disease,
thrombosis,
Ménière's syndrome,
Vogt–Koyanagi–Harada disease and, lately,
lead poisoning. Goya became deaf. At first, he couldn't see well either, and found it difficult maintaining balance while walking. Illness kept him in Cádiz for almost half a year. After Goya returned to Madrid, he was unable to resume his normal activities for a long time. Thus, in March 1794, the director of the
Fábrica de Tapices (Tapestry Factory) believed that Goya was unable to paint because of his illness. In April 1797, Goya resigned as Director of the Academy due to prolonged convalescence from his ailments. Serious illness caused a great crisis in Goya's life. The shock of being one step away from death and permanent deafness engendered a crucial change in his life. His work after 1793 has a new depth and seriousness. His attitude became more critical, and his deafness had sharpened his inner consciousness. His language became rich and enigmatic. The Enlightenment ideology became a constant reference. This was recognized by Francisco Zapater, his friend and biographer, who stated that Goya, in the last decade of the 18th century, "was agitated by the new ideas that were sweeping Europe." However, his ideology evolved towards skepticism. He went from trusting in enlightened thought that sought to improve society by showing its faults and vices to becoming a precursor of the current world that lost confidence in the intellectual capacity of men to regenerate their society and only found a dark world without ideals. This transition and evolution in his thinking occurred during the creation of the
Caprichos and can be seen in plates depicting satire with clearly illustrated inspiration and others depicting his skepticism in the possibilities of man. Critics of Goya's art distinguish between his work before and after his illness, considering the latter the most valuable and authentic style of the painter. In a letter that he wrote to his friend from the Academy, Bernardo Iriarte, on January 4, 1794, Goya gives important testimony that while convalescing from his serious illness, his art depicted observations and revelations that would not have been possible in his commissioned works. He referred to innovative small paintings of themes related to the
Inquisition or the asylum where he had developed a personal and intense vision with an extremely expressive style. Thus, Goya's illness establishes not only a chronological division of his art, it also establishes a division between commissioned works, subject to inevitable restrictions by the conventions of the time, and other more personal works for himself and friends where he expressed himself with total freedom. In 1796 Goya visited
Andalusia and made a series of sketches, some of which anticipate
Los Caprichos. , expressionist and nonrealistic use of light to enhance relevant themes, ambiguous captions, and multiple visual messages. inspired his satires on the inconstancy of women in love and their impiety towards lovers. Drawing from Album A of the Duchess combing her hair. Chinese ink wash. In 1796, Goya returned to Andalusia with Ceán Bermúdez, and after July he was in
Sanlúcar de Barrameda with the
Duchess of Alba, who had been widowed the previous month. The meeting with her represented a period of sensuality that was reflected in a series of masterful drawings where the duchess appears: Album A, or
Album de Sanlúcar, that would inspire some of the themes of the
Caprichos. Also, the bitter ending and separation inspired other prints of the series. Later he made the drawings for the so-called Album B, or
Sanlúcar-Madrid, where he criticized vices of his time through caricatures. In this album, he increased the effect of chiaroscuro, making use of light to emphasize visual areas of ideological importance. This expressionist and nonrealistic use of light, previously used in the paintings of the
Charterhouse of Aula Dei (
Cartuja de Aula Dei), was used profusely in the
Caprichos. Also in this notebook, Goya began to write titles or phrases in the compositions. These stinging comments often have a double meaning in the Spanish literary tradition. Likewise, Goya began to fill his images with ambiguous visual meanings; the images and the texts enable several different interpretations of the drawings. The
Caprichos innovated this characteristic in depth. . The work is an
etching with
aquatint and other
intaglio media on
laid paper. In principle, Goya planned this
Capricho to be the cover of his engravings. Here he portrayed himself in a very different way than he finally decided to present himself at the beginning of
Los Caprichos: abstracted, half asleep, and surrounded by his obsessions. An owl hands him his drawing supplies, clearly indicating the origin of his inventions. He intended the cover title to be: "
Dreams, the First Universal Language. Drawn and engraved by Francisco de Goya. Year 1797. The Author Dreaming." His aim is to banish harmful vulgarities, and this work of
Caprichos promulgates the solid testimony of the truth." Goya initially conceived this series of prints as "
Sueños" (
Dreams), and not as
Caprichos, making at least 28 preparatory drawings, 11 of them from Album B (located in the Prado Museum, except for some that have disappeared). In the
Diario de Madrid of February 6, 1799, the sale of the collection was announced, along with the painter's motivation. A total of 300 copies was put up for sale. The advertisement indicates that they were sold at the perfumery on the
Calle del Desengaño No. 1 (ironically, Disillusion Street No. 1), the same building where Goya lived. As has been noted, Goya associated with people committed to the fight for the reformation of Spanish life and embraced the Enlightenment program of renewal. The
Diario de Madrid coincided with the reflections of the enlightened about forces hostile to the development of reason. Aware of the risk of criticism, and to protect himself, Goya gave his prints labels that were sometimes precise, but other times imprecise, especially for prints that criticized the aristocracy and the clergy. Also, Goya softened the message by giving an illogical arrangement and numbering of the engravings. If he had followed a more logical sequence, his work would have undergone more stringent censorship and received explosive criticism, exposing him to greater consequences. Although Goya took risks, at the time of its publication, the
Caprichos had the support of his enlightened friends who were once again in power since November 1797. However, Godoy's fall from power and the absence of Jovellanos and Saavedra in the government precipitated events. Perhaps wary of possible intervention by the Inquisition, Goya withdrew the
Caprichos from sale. Although in a later letter in 1803 to Miguel Cayetano Soler, Goya incorrectly stated that the series was on sale for two days; in actuality, they were on sale for fourteen days. It is assumed that Goya wanted to mitigate details that could harm him. The fear of the Inquisition, which then enforced public morality and sustained the existing society, was real, since these engravings attacked the clergy and the high nobility. The specific origins of the conflict between the
Caprichos and the Inquisition is well documented in the book
La Inquisición sin máscara (
The Inquisition Unmasked), published in Cádiz in 1811 by the enlightened Antonio Puigblanch (under the pseudonym Nataniel Jomtob): "''In the famous collection of satirical prints known as Caprichos, by D. Francisco Goya y Lucientes, Court Painter of Charles IV, two are intended to mock the Inquisition. In the first, number 23, which presents an owl, the author rebukes the greed of the inquisitors in the following way. He paints a prisoner sitting on a stand or bench on top of a platform with a sambenito [A garment worn by the penitents of the Inquisition court. The sambenito was used to humiliate heretics and the condemned. The sambenito varied depending on the crime and the sentence. Penitents condemned to death wore a sambenito with flames, while penitents who repented wore a yellow sambenito.] and a coroza [An elongated paper cone placed on the head of certain condemned people as humiliation, painted with figures alluding to the crime or its punishment.], his head fallen on his chest with an embarrassed gesture, and the secretary reading the sentence from the pulpit in the presence of a large gathering of ecclesiastics, with this motto at the foot: 'Those powders.' The second part of the saying must be applied, which is: 'they brought this sludge.' The handwritten explanation states: the scops owls are the pastime and entertainment of a certain class of people. The motto must be applied not to the prisoner, as it seems at first sight, but to the court... This work, despite the veil in which its author covered it, whether depicting the objects in caricature or applying indirect or vague inscriptions to them, was directed at the Inquisition. Nevertheless, the sheets or plates were not lost because Mr. Goya hastened to offer them to the king, and the king ordered them to be deposited in the Chalcography Institute.''" '
Announcement for the sale of “Los Caprichos
”' Diario «Madrid» Wednesday, February 6, 1799 "Collection of prints of whimsical matters, invented and etched by D. Francisco de Goya” "The artist being convinced that condemnation of human faults and vices can also be the object of painting (although seemingly particular to eloquence and poetry), he has chosen as appropriate subjects for his work―among the multitude of extravagances and mistakes common in all civil society and among vulgar concerns and lies, inspired by custom, ignorance, or self-interest― those he believes most apt to provide material for ridicule while exciting the fantasy of the artist. "Since most of the objects represented in this work are idealized, it may not be audacious to believe their defects perhaps will find justification among the intelligent. Considering that the artist has neither followed the examples of others nor copied directly from nature, and if imitation is as difficult as it is admirable when achieved; he should be admired who has exposed to the viewer's eyes forms and attitudes that completely deviate from what until now has only existed in the human mind, obscured and confused by lack of enlightenment or heated by the untethering of passions. It would be assuming too much in the fine arts to warn the public that in none of the compositions that make up this collection did the author intend to ridicule defects particular to one or another individual; which would really serve to narrow the limits of talent too much and to mistake the means by which the imitative arts produce perfect works. Painting (like poetry) chooses from the universal what it judges most appropriate for its purposes; it brings together, in a single fantastic portrayal, circumstances and characters that nature represents scattered among many, and ingeniously arranged; from this combination results that happy imitation by which a good craftsman acquires the title of innovator and not of servile copyist.” "To be sold at Calle del Desengaño No. 1, a perfume and liquor store, payment of 320 reales for each collection of 80 prints."
Los Caprichos were withdrawn from public sale very shortly after their release in 1799, after only 27 copies of the set had been purchased. In 1803, to save the
Caprichos, Goya decided to offer the plates and all the available series (240) to the king, destined for the Royal Chalcography, in exchange for a pension for his son. In 1825, he would write that he had been denounced to the Inquisition. Goya possibly kept some of the series, which he sold in Cádiz during the War of Independence. According to the Prado Museum manuscript, the last page indicates that the bookseller Ranza took 37 copies. According to this, either Goya or the Royal Chalcography released copies for sale in Cádiz in 1811. Considering that in the donation document to the king it was said that 27 copies were sold to the public, this first series had a total of about 300 copies. Therefore, it must have been the denunciation to the Inquisition that motivated the opportunistic transfer to the King’s Chalcography of this first edition, made in reddish or sepia ink. It is significant that Goya held an ambivalent position, close to the enlightened, but strongly related to the traditional power as painter of the king and his aristocracy, which allowed him to request the king's help and obtain his protection. As the work was enigmatic, aspiring to make sense of the plates, contemporary handwritten comments soon emerged that have been preserved. The manuscript conserved in the Prado Museum is the best known, as well as the most cautious and ambiguous. It avoids dangerous comments by giving a general and unspecific nature to the most compromising prints, especially those referring to religious and political matters. Two others, one that belonged to the playwright
López de Ayala and the other in the
National Library of Madrid, contain language that freely criticizes the clergy, politics, and even specific people. The second edition would have been made between 1821 and 1836, previously printed like all the following ones by the Royal National Chalcography. The last one is from 1936-1939 during the
Spanish Civil War. Due to so many editions, the plates are deteriorated, and some can no longer reproduce the effects initially planned.
Tomás Harris considered that from print No. 1, the most used, a total of around two thousand prints must have been made. Goya devised more prints for the
Caprichos that for unknown reasons he did not include in the series. Thus, three proofs of three different engravings are preserved in the National Library of Madrid and two proofs of two other engravings in the
National Library of Paris. Furthermore, the Prado Museum has five drawings with signs of having been recorded on plates. ==Theme==