The collection of “viable monsters” - as Baudelaire described Goya’s frightening and ingenious creatures - prompted reflection on witchcraft, religious superstition, corruption and sexual exploitation, focusing on the vices and evils widespread in human society. 

Francisco Goya’s graphic art still offers significant insight into the artist’s complex personality, torn between the ambition to play a part in the highest spheres of society at the time, which he fulfilled by becoming painter to the court of Charles III of Spain, and deep belief in the ideals of the Enlightenment and in an early form of Europeanism that won ever-increasing support in the intellectual circles he frequented. In addition to this dichotomy, we have the partial indecipherability of many of his works, which often present areas of shadow and ambiguity, giving rise to a profusion of different interpretations despite being explicit in iconographic and thematic terms. The unfathomable workings of his mind provided the basis both for the idea that his engravings, sometimes seen as the expression of tormented genius, present an accumulation of his innermost thoughts, and also for the notion of Goya as a forerunner of Romanticism and the contemporary artist, due to his reflection on questions regarding the autonomy of art and the pursuit of freedom in the dynamics between the public and private spheres.¹ It is thus possible to distinguish in his works a challenge to the values of the society of the time - in the form of a critique of the widespread conservatism and conformism imposed by the Inquisition and the exercise of monarchical power - and disillusionment over the betrayal of the ideals of the Enlightenment and the events bound up with the Peninsular War of 1808-14. While an enigmatic and sometimes contradictory foundation clearly emerges also from the officially commissioned works, it is above all in the graphic art and series of paintings such as the Pinturas negras (Black Paintings) that his pursuit of freedom of expression and determination to protest against the injustices of his day by revealing them fully manifests itself. 

Goya’s experience of engraving began during his apprenticeship in the workshop of the painter José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza, which was characterised by the study of drawing and copying from prints, followed by a trip to Italy between 1769 and 1771. It is in this period that he is believed to have seen the prints of Giambattista Piranesi and the copies of works by great masters such as Raphael and Titian. Echoes of this journey are to be found in the engraving of the flight into Egypt (La huida a Egipto),² presumably produced on his return to Spain but certainly on the basis of the drawings in his famous Cuaderno italiano (Italian sketchbook). He moved to Madrid the following year and produced engravings of paintings by Diego Velázquez, an artist he greatly admired, from 1778 while working at the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara.³ 

The first major production of prints came with the publication of the Caprichos series, announced in the Diario de Madrid on 6 February 1799. Consisting of eighty highly satirical and allegorical engravings, it immediately came to the attention of the Inquisition and was quickly withdrawn from the market. The limited circulation of this work, few copies of which were sold, prevented it from becoming generally known. A copy did come into the hands of Charles IV in 1803, however, through the nobleman and politician Manuel Godoy, then prime minister and a close friend of the artist.⁴ The collection of “viable monsters” - as Baudelaire described Goya’s frightening and ingenious creatures - prompted reflection on witchcraft, religious superstition, corruption and sexual exploitation, focusing on the vices and evils widespread in human society. Beneath every image is a comment, often in the form of common parlance, serving to draw the moral. Together with the purely visual elements, these captions present an ironic and detached reflection on contingent reality and a universal reading of the themes addressed. It appears significant that the announcement spoke of “inventions”, thus indicating the artist’s intention to ward off possible criticism. A precedent for this can be found in the discarded frontispiece of 1797, in which the series was entitled Idioma universal (Universal Language) and the engravings Sueños (Dreams), evanescent terms belonging rather to an oneiric, atemporal realm of the imagination with undefinable spatial coordinates. The reference to universality and to the vices of humanity thus leads to the complex of ideas, nightmares and revelations perfectly encapsulated in the engraving El sueño de la razón produce monstruos (The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters). 

Alessandra Franetovich   

¹ The numerous publications on Goya’s graphic art include the following: Sánchez Cantón 1949; Harris 1964; Lafuente Ferrari 1977; Glendinning 1978; V. Bozal, “Los Caprichos: el mundo de la noche”, in Francisco de Goya grabador 1992; Pérez Sánchez, Gallego 1994; C. Garrido Sanchez, “La técnica goyesca de grabado, la otra imagen de Goya”, in Congreso Internacional Goya 1996, pp. 183-195; Matilla 1999.

² The engraving is hard to date. It may have been produced in 1774 on the occasion of the birth of his first son, Antonio Juan Ramón y Carlos.

³ Goya worked at the Real Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara from 1775 under Anton Raphael Mengs, the artistic director at the time, producing cartoons for tapestries to hang in the royal palaces. These depictions of carefree scenes already afford glimpses of the interest in the metaphorical dimension of images that was to be developed more consciously in the Caprichos. 

⁴ Wilson-Bareau 1981, p. 23.