The “Caprichos” of Francisco Goya were among the first etchings to be done with aquatint, and were completed between 1796 and 1798 then put on sale the following year in book form. They had begun to take shape in the form of sketchbooks, particularly one called Madrid sketchbook, soon after Goya’s recovery from his illness. In the silent isolated world that the artist now inhabited, his observations of city life shifted from genre, satire, or burlesque into a bitter depiction of the nature of society. This new mood must have puzzled, even if it did not shock, a public that had never seen anything like the “Caprichos” before.
"Even Thus he Cannot Make her Out Again and again Goya targets assumptions that people make about relationships: between men and woman; elder and younger; clergy and congregation. While he attempts to expose the mercenary nature of marriage, he also addresses the cult of prostitution. In his “Ni así la distingue” (Even like this he can’t make her out), Goya shows what appear to be a well dressed man leaning in and viewing a beautiful young maja through a monocle. According to Robert Hughes, once again Goya is highlighting the mutual deception being undertaken by the two protagonists. The prostitute must not immediately reveal that she is a prostitute since this would deflate the romantic illusion and possibly scare off her customer; the gentleman is also quite willing to suppress the truth since he is perfectly happy to maintain the pretence that a beautiful young woman is charmed by his company." Read More: http://www.hoocher.com/Francisco_de_Goya/Francisco_de_Goya.htm
Only twenty-seven sets were sold in fifteen days, and the prints were withdrawn from the market. Their poor public reception may not have been their only reason. The Inquisition perhaps insisted on the removal, or it may have been done as a matter of precaution in wary anticipation of such a demand. The “Caprichos” included monks and priests among the devilish and folly ridden assembly, and Goya was denounced by the authorities of the church. But with his talent for skirting disaster, he somehow managed to turn the incident to his benefit. Cleverly, he made a gift of the plates to the king, who then returned the favor by granting a yearly pension to Goya’s son, Francisco Xavier.
Goya. It is Time. Alan Woods: In the series known as Los Caprichos - the Caprices - there is a qualitative leap. The world of the majas and majos, of sunshine and grapes, of love and laughter, has disappeared. In stead we have already a world of witches and devils. We have the Inquisition (see the Gallery) that still dominated Spain with its tortures and autos de fe - the mass burning of heretics that filled the public squares with the acrid stench of burning flesh. Even in his earlier paintings Goya displayed his hatred of the Inquisition. His paintings of autos de fe were a silent denunciation of ignorance and superstition from the standpoint of the Enlightenment. There is a similar darker view of human relationships. In the early paintings the relations between men and women are depicted in a light-hearted, almost frivolous manner. In the Caprices, things are presented in an altogether different light. There are scenes of rape and the selling of a maiden's virtue for money. read more: http://www.marxist.com/ArtAndLiterature-old/goya_1.html image: http://www.wesleyan.edu/dac/imag/1946/00D1/0040/1946-D1-40-0080-m01.html
ADDENDUM:
Fred Licht’s book Goya, says Goya began laboring on this set in 1797; Reva Wolf’s book Goya and the Satirical Print says he was laboring on it in 1796; Xavier de Salas’ Goya quotes two sources showing that Goya began preparing the Caprichos in 1793. Whatever the case, the Philip Hofer introduction to the Dover Books edition of Los Caprichos says that Goya sold 27 sets (in two days) across the street from his home at a shop for perfume and liquors. Sarah Symmon’s book Goya says the prints were sold in a liqueur & scent shop which was downstairs from Goya’s Madrid apartment. Read More: http://eeweems.com/goya/sleep_of_reason.html a
---In the Foreword to his edition of Goya's Complete Etchings, Aldous Huxley (whose Brave New World offers a fairly bleak view of the fates of men and women in a world ruled by monsters), summarized Goya's portrayal of his world in his "Later Works" (which include all of Goya's major etching series: "These creatures who haunt Goya's Later Works are inexpressibly horrible, with the horror of mindlessness and animality and spiritual darkness. And above the lower depths where they obscenely pullulate is a world of bad priests and lustful friars, of fascinating women whose love is a 'dream of lies and inconstancy,' of fatuous nobles and, at the top of the social pyramid, a royal family of half-wits, sadists, Messalinas and perjurers. --- The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters. read more: http://www.spaightwoodgalleries.com/Pages/Goya.html
The usual legend about the Caprichos is that after two days Goya personally withdrew the remaining unsold sets (approximately 270). The public reaction was apparently quite negative and was enough for Goya to fear legal repercussions, if not actually coming under the power of the Inquisition itself. Robert Hughes book, Goya, however, states there is no evidence for this turn of events, that instead the Caprichos were simply unpopular, that Goya could not get them into even Madrid bookstores, their proper outlet.
Mark Vallen: That Goya made his “Golden Beak” a parrot added extra bite to his critique, since a parrot is a masterful mimic of sounds; the artist implying that Golden Beak was simply promulgating the ideas put forth by ruling class circles. Goya was ambivalent about who his Golden Beak was, an academic, a physician, perhaps a member of the aristocracy? What is certain is that we have our own Golden Beaks today – those who promise “hope” and “change” but deliver war and privation. read more: http://art-for-a-change.com/blog/2010/06/goya-los-caprichos-in-los-angeles.html
Sarah Symmon’s says that in 1803 he donated the unsold sets, along with the copper plates, to the Royal print works as part of a deal to secure a pension for his son Xavier. She also states that Goya, later in life, said that he withdrew the Caprichos out of fear of the Inquisition. Frank Milner’s book (also simply titled Goya) carries this same chronology of events, but Milner simply says that the etching sets were priced too highly (320 Spanish reales, roughly the equivalent to an ounce of gold) and there was not a very large audience for the deeply thought-out allusions that Goya imbued the Caprichos with. Read More: http://eeweems.com/goya/sleep_of_reason.html a
"They who Cannot "Tu que no puedes" (You who cannot). Goya unites the trope of the topsy-turvey world and the practice of symbolizing humans as donkeys to target the nobility metaphorically riding on the backs of the hard working poor." read more: http://www.hoocher.com/Francisco_de_Goya/Francisco_de_Goya.htm
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