General Folly, plate nine from The Proverbs

Discussion

FROM THE ART INSTITUTE OF CHICAGO’S CATALOG

General Folly is the most enigmatic print from one of Francisco de Goya’s most thematically obscure series. When it was finally published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando decades after the artist’s death—a delay presumably caused by the repressive political environment in Madrid during his lifetime—each sheet was given a Spanish proverb as its title, though the artist himself captioned them “follies.” This work was joined with the proverb “the claws of a cat and the dress of a devotee,” or “Vice is often clothed in Virtue’s habit.”

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