Published in 1799, the Caprichos is one of Francisco de Goya’s most influential and daring series. Comprising 80 prints, it’s a scathing critique of the vices, superstitions, and contradictions of Spanish society in his time. Through satirical scenes, grotesque figures, and ambiguous situations, Goya denounces ignorance, abuse of power, moral corruption, and social hypocrisy.
The artist combines etching and aquatint with innovative technical freedom, he uses dramatic contrasts of light and shadow to intensify the symbolic dimension of the images. The famous print The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters sums up the spirit of the series: when reason falls asleep, the ghosts of irrationality emerge.
Beyond immediate criticism, the Caprichos inaugurates a new way of understanding of printmaking as a space for intellectual reflection and personal expression, anticipating modern sensibilities.
This enlightened attitude led Goya to express his view of the situation in Spain with critical imagery that could also easily be generalised to other contexts at the same time because much of it addressed universal failings. As quoted in the announcement in the Gaceta de Madrid, the painter wanted to ‘highlight some of the many extravagances and mistakes that are common to all civil societies, and well as some concerns and vulgar myths authorised by custom, ignorance or interest that he deemed most likely to provide material for ridicule and to exercise his imagination’.
Goya mixed high-brow and popular tastes, references to plays and literature and to contemporary events that made a splash in the newspapers to engage in satirical and moralising criticism of vices and problems present in Spanish society. His learned criticism targeted popular superstition and ignorance and the economically and socially unproductive privileged classes (nobility and regular clergy). He also highlighted the incompetence of professional and political groups, as well as vice and corruption in society, such as prostitution, marriages of convenience, the poor or non-existent education of most Spanish children at the time, the violence commonly used against them, hypocrisy and the lack of empathy. He also lambasted the Inquisition, an institution greatly reviled by the enlightened classes and responsible for repressing any religious, moral or ideological deviations, and witchcraft, an important subject in the series. There is no shortage of silly situations to criticise ignorant teachers and doctors, nobles who use rent and lordly rights to exploit the peasants and fatuous patrons of the arts like Godoy.
Third edition (1868), Calcografía Nacional.