The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters, plate 43 from Los Caprichos
Medium
Etching and aquatint on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 18 × 12 cm (7 1/8 × 4 3/4 in.); Plate: 21.2 × 15 cm (8 3/8 × 5 15/16 in.); Sheet: 30.3 × 19.8 cm (11 15/16 × 7 13/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
44743
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Hovering between the grotesque and the comical, Francisco de Goya’s series Los caprichos (Whims or Fantasies) consists of 80 etchings satirizing Spanish society during the late 18th century. For this iconic image, which may have been intended as the title page of the series, Goya represented himself as an artist who has fallen asleep at his drawing table. In the background are his nightmares, the macabre tormenters that pervade the rest of these prints.
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...