Los Caprichos was Goya’s first significant etching suite: a near unrivalled technical and satirical masterpiece. First printed in 1799, its publication marked a defining point in his career.
In 1792 Goya developed a debilitating illness which ultimately left him deaf. His recuperation took over five years, a period of withdrawal that had a profound and depressing impact on his life. Distress and anxiety found expression in new subjects: witches, banditos, gaols and moon-lit mad-houses. In his isolation, he began to draw with a frequency and conviction he had not previously experienced.
The resulting sketches, informed by the Enlightenment philosophies of Rousseau and Voltaire, birthed the extraordinary Los Caprichos. The word ‘caprice’ normally suggests whimsical fancy, but Goya’s Caprichos are as wickedly vulgar as they come. Across 80 etchings Goya exposed what he saw as the cultures of corruption and stupidity that had infected Spanish society and its institutions, illustrated in a litany of sins, from witchcraft and diabolism to Inquisitorial quackery.
More than a satirical tour-de-force, the Caprichos masterfully employed a new printmaking method called aquatint, which involves dusting and melting fine particles of resin into a minutely pock-marked ground on the plate. Where in the past large areas of darkness could only be achieved in etching with dense cross-hatching, aquatint enabled tones comparable to an ink wash. Goya was among the first artists to make use of it, and the results were astonishing. Drunkards and lecherous priests leer from the shadows while demons wheel in night skies specked with stars.
Though as court painter to King Charles IV Goya was well connected, he was unable to find an audience for these strange, savage images. Sales were pitiful: in four years just 27 copies of the suite were bought. Eventually the King intervened, requesting the surrender of all unsold sets and acquiring the original copper etching plates, saving them for posterity.
Several posthumous editions – including those illustrated here – were taken from these plates, ensuring that what was once a financial catastrophe of heroic proportions became, after Goya’s death, one of the most revered print suites ever published. From Delacroix to Otto Dix, it continues to influence to this day.
