Rejoice, Carnival, for Tomorrow Thou wilt Be Ashes, plate 14 from Los Proverbios
Medium
Etching and aquatint printed in sepia ink on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.1 × 32.4 cm (8 5/16 × 12 13/16 in.); Plate: 24.5 × 35.8 cm (9 11/16 × 14 1/8 in.); Sheet: 35.1 × 48.7 cm (13 7/8 × 19 3/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
44879
Art Historical Context
In Francisco Goya's *Rejoice, Carnival, Tomorrow Thou wilt Be Ashes*, plate 14 from series *Los Proverb* (also known as *Los Disparates created between 1815 and 1824, the artist captures a macabre carnival revelry echoing the Spanish proverb that warns of fleeting pleasures and inevitable death—a classic *memento mori*. This late print reflects Goya's shift toward surreal, nightmarish visions in his final years, amid Spain's turbulent post-Napoleonic recovery. As a master of Romanticism and precursor to modernism, Goya uses grotesque figures in chaotic motion to critique human folly and mortal...
About the Artist
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in the small Aragonese village of Fuendetodos, Spain, to José Benito de Goya, a master gilder, and Gracia de Lucientes. The fourth of six children in a modest lower-middle-class family, Goya received a basic education before beginning his artistic training at age 14 under the local painter José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza, where he sp...