One of the prints shows a group of "two-faced" women, both faces looking like the Duchess of Alba.
In taking aim at Spanish society with Los Caprichos, was Goya also holding himself and the Duchess of Alba up to censure? It had to be a conscious decision to depict the Duchess of Alba in such fashion. But the motivation for this could only have come from powerful emotional factors, deep within himself, such as an admission of personal guilt.
The other prints of Goya's Los Caprichos made good his promise to depict humanity's "innumerable foibles and follies." This he did, skewering Spanish society like a bullfighting picador with his lance.
Goya reserved special ridicule for the Spanish nobility, not just the Duchess of Alba. One of my favorite prints from this series shows an aristocratic mule studying his pedigree - a long line of mules.
Another print, entitled Chinchillas, derived from a famous eighteenth century comedy. Goya's Spanish noblemen, with their padlocked brains, may have inspired the features of one of Hollywood's most dreaded monsters. There has been some speculation that the Universal Studio makeup man, Jack Pierce, based the features of Boris Karloff in the 1931 film, Frankenstein, on Goya's Chinchillas.
Francisco Goya, The Chinchillas, 1799
If the look of the Monster (Karloff) in Frankenstein did derive from Los Caprichos then the caption of the most famous print from the series takes on added significance.
Plate 43 of Los Caprichos, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, is the introductory image of this review. It is one of Goya's most familiar and most studied images. The common interpretation of this print has Goya, the Man of the Enlightenment, warning of the gathering irrational forces threatening the Age of Reason.
A very different appraisal appears in the essay, "Tensions of the Enlightenment", which can be read in Nineteenth Century Art; a Critical History, edited by Stephen Eisenman. In this a challenging interpretation, Thomas Crow writes:
Yet it is by no means clear that the cloud of monsters that darkens Goya's self-portrait is that of popular ignorance, soon to be dispersed by the artist's satiric pen and sunlit powers of reason. Just as likely is it that Goya is reflecting upon the distressing antipodes of his own mind and upon the Janus-face of Enlightenment itself. For in fact, the very creation of art in an age of Reason entailed a dangerous flirtation with madness.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2017), Detail of The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, 1799
In this view, the Age of Reason was the victim of its own ideology. Well-meaning Enlightenment philosophers like Voltaire, Rousseau and Thomas Paine had prepared the way for the Terror of 1792-94 and for the rise of ruthless, opportunistic tyrants like Napoleon, whose his first military conquests occurred just as Goya prepared Los Caprichos for print.
The Enlightenment had, unwittingly, unleashed the inner demons of humanity, symbolized by the bats, owls and cats surrounding the beleaguered man - Goya, himself - in The Sleep of Reason.
Whatever interpretation one gives to this famous image, its nightmare imagery was amply confirmed by the horrific events of the Spanish revolt against Napoleon, lasting from 1808 to 1814.
Many of the prints in The Disasters of War are so graphic, so revoltingly accurate in their depiction of the atrocities committed by both sides that the series was not published until 1863. Yet, even though he did not personally witness the savage conflict in person, Goya did not exaggerate the unspeakable cruelty. This astonishing realism is indeed surreal because even these horrifying images do not convey the full magnitude of the suffering.
Francisco Goya, What Courage!, 1810-1814
Consider the print What Valor! It records an actual incident, when a young woman, Agustina Domènech, rallied Spanish troops during the siege of Zaragoza by firing a cannon at the advancing French. Goya, who was born in the nearby town of Fuendetodos, was obviously proud of this heroic event. But he was well aware of the staggering death toll of 54,000