To Go Amongst the Branches, i.e. to talk through one's hat, plate three from Los Proverbios
Medium
Etching, aquatint, and drypoint on ivory wove paper
Dimensions
Image: 21.2 × 32.3 cm (8 3/8 × 12 3/4 in.); Plate: 24.4 × 35.2 cm (9 5/8 × 13 7/8 in.); Sheet: 33.1 × 49.7 cm (13 1/16 × 19 5/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
44896
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
This print belongs to a series Goya began in his late 70s but never finished before his move to France in 1824. Titled Los disparates, which roughly translates to “absurdities,” the series includes darkly enigmatic images at once sympathetic and satirical, each one suggesting human folly. Here a group of figures of various ages huddles like a flock of birds on a giant, leafless branch. The original Spanish title of the print, Andarse por las ramas, literally means to walk between branches, but ...
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...