Neither more nor less, plate 41 from Los Caprichos

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

During 1797 to 1799, when Francisco de Goya was producing The Caprices , he served as court painter to Charles IV in Madrid. One cannot help but see this aquatint etching as a wry commentary on the main duty of his vocation—turning the oftentimes immoral and ignoble royals into fetching icons of morality and unfettered nobility. Here he compared his august sitter to a donkey instead—a common satirical trope in 18th-century Spanish literature—and, perhaps even more critically, himself to a monkey.

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