Art Institute of Chicago

Neither more nor less, plate 41 from Los Caprichos

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

Date

1797/99

Medium

Etching and aquatint on ivory laid paper

Culture

Spain

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

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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