Los Caprichos (The Caprices) is a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching created by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1797–1798 and published as an album in 1799. The prints were an artistic experiment: a medium for Goya's satirizing Spanish society at the end of the 18th century, particularly the nobility and the clergy. Goya in his plates humorously and mercilessly criticized society while aspiring to more just laws and a new educational system. Closely associated with the Enlightenment, the criticisms are far-ranging and acidic. The images expose the predominance of superstition, religious fanaticism, the Inquisition, religious orders, the ignorance and inabilities of the various members of the ruling class, pedagogical shortcomings, marital mistakes, and the decline of rationality.Simon, Linda, "The Sleep of Reason", The World and I
Goya added brief explanations of each image to a manuscript, now in the Museo del Prado, which help explain his often cryptic intentions, as do the titles printed below each image. Aware of the risk he was taking, to protect himself, he gave many of his prints imprecise labels, especially the satires of the aristocracy and the clergy. He also diluted the messaging by illogically arranging the engravings. Goya explained in an announcement that he chose subjects "from the multitude of faults and vices common in every civil society, as well as from the vulgar prejudices and lies authorized by custom, ignorance or self-interest, those that he has thought most suitable matter for ridicule."
Despite the relatively vague language of Goya's captions in the Caprichos, Goya's contemporaries understood the engravings, even the most ambiguous ones, as a direct satire of their society, even alluding to specific individuals, though the artist always denied the associations.
The series was published in February 1799; however, just 14 days after going on sale, when Manuel Godoy and his affiliates lost power, the painter hastily withdrew the copies still available for fear of the Inquisition. In 1807, to save the Caprichos, Goya decided to offer the king the plates and the 240 unsold copies, destined for the Royal Calcography, in exchange for a lifetime pension of twelve thousand reales per year for his son Javier.
The work was a tour-de-force critique of 18th-century Spain, and humanity in general, from the point of view of the Enlightenment. The informal style, as well as the depiction of contemporary society found in Caprichos, makes them (and Goya himself) a precursor to the modernist movement almost a century later. Capricho No. 43, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, has attained iconic status in particular.
Goya's series and the last group of prints in his series The Disasters of War, which he called "caprichos enfáticos" ("emphatic caprices"), are far from the spirit of light-hearted fantasy the term "caprice" usually suggests in art.
Thirteen official editions are known: one from 1799, five in the 19th century, and seven in the 20th century, with the last one in 1970 being carried out by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.
Los Caprichos have influenced generations of artists from movements as diverse as French Romanticism, Impressionism, German Expressionism or Surrealism. Ewan MacColl and André Malraux considered Goya one of the precursors of modern art, citing the innovations and ruptures of the Caprichos.
History 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.
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.
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).
Los Sueños (Dreams) would be a graphic version of the literary dreams of the satirical writer Francisco de Quevedo, who wrote a series between 1607 and 1635 in which he dreamed that he was conversing in Hell both with demons and the damned. In Quevedo's dreams, as later in the Caprichos, sinners retain their human form, take on animal attributes that symbolize their vices, or are depicted as witches, such as in Dream No. 3.
The project for this edition consisted of 72 prints. A sales advertisement was published in 1797 specifying that the subscription period was going to last two months, since the plates had yet to be printed. The price set was 288 reales, payable in two months.
Other precedents may have inspired Goya. For instance, the royal collections contained the works of Hieronymus Bosch, whose strange creatures were surely men and women whose vices had turned them into animals that represented their defects. In Arriaga's satires (1784), men are seen converted into donkeys, monkeys, or dogs; the ministers and thieves are wolves; and the clerks are cats (same as in Caprichos No. 21 and 24).
At one point, Goya changed the name of his engravings to “Caprichos” and planned to use all but three of the Dreams as Caprichos. This has been determined because the drawings show signs of having been moistened for transfer to plates. The word "Capricci" had been used in the well-known prints of Jacques Callot from 1617 and in the Capricci of Giambatista Tiepolo to refer to imaginations of reality.
As an engraver, Goya reached maturity in this series. He had previously made another series with engravings of paintings by Velázquez. Goya had needed to learn to engrave because at that time painters did not know the engraving technique, which was considered a craftsman's work. The usual technique in Spain, engraving with a burin, required ten years to master. Goya learned a different technique, etching, which is similar to drawing. He also learned a second, more complicated technique, aquatint, which allowed him gradations of stains from white to black, similar to making washes in paint. Using both techniques simultaneously, which was something new, Goya obtained engravings that are very like paintings. It is unknown where the coppers were stamped; Glendinning points out a printing press as possible, but according to Carderera, it was the painter's house or workshop.