The Proverbs: Two Heads are Better than One or Poor Folly

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Proverbs: Two Heads are Better than One or Poor Folly

Francisco de GoyaLinkedCulture matchlcp-dc200867e871

From the Cleveland Museum of Art record

The Proverbs are a group of 22 prints that are among the most powerful, original, and enigmatic of Goya's etchings. Although many of the scenes can be identified with proverbs, it is hard to judge the political, religious, or social connotations of these works. Many of the prints represent carnival themes, which Goya may have used as an allegory to express ideas concerning the state of Spain and his personal life.

LinkedCulture assembled this text from several fields of Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record, so it is not the museum’s own wording as published. See “How LinkedCulture maps this record” below.

Cleveland Museum of Art’s catalogue record

Medium
etching, aquatint, drypoint and engraving
Credit Line
Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund
Type of artwork
Print
Department
Prints

Also in Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. The museum’s own label for these fields has not been confirmed yet, so each is named by its field in the museum’s data.

creation_date
1816–1823 (printed c. 1863)

Taken from LinkedCulture’s stored copy of Cleveland Museum of Art’s record. A fresh capture of the museum’s own record has not been made for this object yet.

From LinkedCulture

A dark-clad woman lunges forward with one arm raised, reaching toward a cluster of grotesque hooded figures, while a disembodied head peers up from the lower center of the frame. This is one of Francisco de Goya's Proverbs, a series of 22 etchings made between 1816 and 1823 and printed only after his death. Combining etching, aquatint, drypoint, and engraving, Goya built scenes so enigmatic that no single meaning has ever held. These prints matter because they show an artist working in secret, pushing the limits of what images could say about madness, carnival, and the state of a nation.

Written by LinkedCulture for its video on this object. Machine-generated (claude-sonnet-4-6), not yet reviewed by a person. It is not part of the museum’s record.

What the image shows

A group of people gathered around a central figure who appears to be speaking or gesturing.

Generated by LinkedCulture from the photograph alone, without the museum’s catalogue text (Qwen/Qwen2.5-VL-7B-Instruct), and not yet reviewed by a person. It describes the picture, not the object’s history, and it is not part of the museum’s record.

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The authoritative record is held by Cleveland Museum of Art. LinkedCulture surfaces this object and its connections; it does not alter institutional metadata. The fields above are the museum’s, under its own labels. LinkedCulture’s derived fields are listed separately below and marked as ours.

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Open this page QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.NXemfnix8AZ-dWyG.mWDhY-E2OjC8rcpmAzFzYPIy4tql7XSsSGLUHjN-set35G2pzIujNFBfkXURvHPP8XKzhx-D7IZpg7eJ2qIadoISEpyMFBnmgr8Q-SyJJI28FgVckGN4TjVDL8I82wzz1FxkPEGpS8ahxLR7zLN9t98qiMWdR1oQllS_Qe28utNicEEu0_H1pXKBftYg6GiQT_nT3gNbbFmCAPrIVkZbDbrr5nUqaGsmb1tTIBHe5F7kBwiZanPbemolKmms90dxUvp5BhrZUtCfFTc4C7J_t7htkBO-M-yv0ew8L1L256xs9UjHngSee at Cleveland Museum of Art QR destination: https://linkedculture.org/q/q1.xvBecR0ky8kkdFJY.HyZDNKXHI8hn5bJk98u9Q8bT1hU7nhIGltWXp_soNGYA5NjnwSzNVrb48AfPZupTm_EL24Z1iT6QKmwve7L_d7pBiehVF3a5IW3JctbI7SjxjnpP3g2yhxQV3qpbiXRaSoUmMVbD94q4_Z9zMEhijkrBi_Du9sumgij02k6gSy2v5fnbMkYOLZe4IWquRyflzGURG_ULVBJ1eFiUHB7PxLllar5ATIefbgUh5htdTJxDoCLbJ7OJf3QYaEPXfr2TR_BqPB1zsEsAuLF9j_poCSZtDyqpizjFsqtafwE
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How LinkedCulture maps this record

To search objects from different museums together, LinkedCulture reads each museum’s record into a common set of fields. The values below are LinkedCulture’s, under LinkedCulture’s names. They are not Cleveland Museum of Art’s wording; the museum’s own record is shown above under its own labels.

Object ID
159719
Object Type
Print
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Type of artwork” · copied as is
Creator
Francisco de Goya
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creators (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · derived by LinkedCulture from the museum field · Artist-role creator's description with life dates removed.
Culture
Spain
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Culture” · copied as is
Medium
etching, aquatint, drypoint and engraving
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Medium” · copied as is · Cleveland's 'technique' field holds materials.
Department
Prints
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Department” · copied as is
Tags
  • Latine and Hispanic Artists
  • male
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field artists_tags (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · combined from several museum fields
Credit Line
Edwin R. and Harriet Pelton Perkins Memorial Fund
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field “Credit Line” · copied as is
Date
1816–1823 (printed c. 1863)
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
Begin Year
1816
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_earliest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is
End Year
1823
  • Cleveland Museum of Art field creation_date_latest (museum’s label not yet confirmed) · copied as is

The museum’s own record has not been captured for this object yet, so the museum fields shown above are limited to values LinkedCulture stored unchanged.

LinkedCulture video

The Proverbs: Two Heads are Better than One or Poor Folly

Oct 10, 2026 · Short

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Museum record

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