ualed Rembrandt's. Goya's use of blank space, as can be seen in Plate 6, Nobody Knows Himself, is in a class by itself. The patch of light on the temple and cheek of the woman on the left and over the breast of the younger woman on the right open passage ways straight to the human mind and heart and soul.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2017), Detail of Goya's Nobody Knows Himself,1799
That is what the experience of going deaf did to Goya. He seems to have developed a heightened degree of vision, cutting through all the pretense and posturing of society. As if in compensation for his loss of hearing, Goya was able to see more clearly, deep into the human spirit. No one could hide from him - including himself.
Plate 5 of Los Caprichos is a fitting example of Goya's penetrating vision. The scene is one that could be seen on most plazas of Spanish towns or cities in the late 1700's. A young, stylish gentleman is ogling a voluptuous woman in a revealing "maja" dress. Yet, this image has much more to reveal.
Francisco Goya, They've Already Got a Seat,1799
The facial features of the woman in Plate 5 resembles those of the Duchess of Alba (1762-1802). The wealthiest and most notorious woman in Spain,the Duchess had looks to match. "Every hair on her head elicits desire," an admiring Frenchman declared.
Anne Lloyd, Photo (2017), Detail of Goya's They've Already Got a Seat, 1799
In 1796, the now-deaf Goya went to the country estate of the Duchess for a lengthy visit in order to paint portraits of her. The most famous of these, in the collection of the Hispanic Society in New York, shows her dressed in mourning for the recently deceased Duke of Alba. The Duchess was also shown wearing a ring inscribed "Goya."
Yet, if Goya had an illicit affair with the Duchess, it cannot have been a happy one. The eighty prints of Los Caprichos, created in aquatint and etching, were published in an album in 1799. Quite a number of the prints show women with the features of the Duchess and not to her advantage - courtesans, women "on the make," shrews. 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 