yard with lunatics , 1793-1794

Yard with Lunatics, 1793-1794.

To occupy my imagination, mortified in consideration of my ills, and to

recuperate in part the great expenses that they have caused, I devoted myself to painting a set of cabinet paintings, in which I have realized observations that

are usually not permitted by commissioned works, and in which

caprice and invention have no greater extension.

--Goya on the presentation of this and other “Cabinet Pictures” to the Royal

Academy, 1794

Goya, Los Caprichos, title page, 1799.

A collection of prints and capricious subjects, invented and etched by Don Francisco Goya. The author is persuaded that the censure of human error and vices (although this seems the preserve of oratory and poetry) may also be a worthy object of painting: as subjects appropriate to his work, he has selected from a multitude of stupidities and errors common to every civil society, and from among the ordinary obfuscation and lies condoned by custom, ignorance or self-interest, those which he believes most appropriate to furnish material for ridicule, and at the same time, fantasy.

Los Caprichos (43): The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters.

Goya, Disasters of War: And There is Nothing To Be Done, 1810-20, (etching and aquatint, 14.1 x 16.8 cm [6 x 8 in])

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Insult to Injury, 2003.

Goya, Disasters of War: Not This, 1810-20, (etching and aquatint, 15.8 x 20.8 cm [6 x 8 in]).

Goya, Disasters of War: This Is Worse, 1810-20, (etching and aquatint, 15.8 x 20.8 cm [6 x 8 in]).

Jake and Dinos Chapman, Insult to Injury, 2003.

Goya, 2nd of May, 1806, 1814.

Goya, 3rd of May, 1806, 1814.

Goya, Self Portrait with Dr. Arrieta, 1820.

Goya thankful to his friend Arrieta:

for the skill and care with which he saved his life during his short and dangerous illness, endured at the

end of 1819, at seventy-three years

of age. He painted it in 1820.

Goya, Pilgrimage to San Isidro, 1821-23, (oil on canvas, 140x438 cm).

Goya, The Hermitage of San Isidro, 1788.

Goya, Saturn Devouring His Children, 1821-23, Oil on plaster transferred to canvas