Two wretches fighting in mid-air being grabbed by monsters. Etching by F. Goya, 1796/1798.

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [1796/1798]

1 print : etching with aquatint ; platemark 20.9 x 15.3 cm

Quien lo creyera? English translation of lettering: "Who would believe it?" Bears number: 62

Wellcome Collection 37082i

"Los Caprichos" are a set of eighty etchings/aquatints made by Francisco Goya y Lucientes between the years 1796-98. They were first published and advertised for sale in Madrid papers in 1799. Very few copies were purchased and in 1803, having sold only twenty-seven copies, Goya offered the copperplates together with 240 unsold sets to Charles IV in exchange for a pension for his son, Javier. The next edition was published in the mid-nineteenth century and the last edition was made in Madrid in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Wellcome holds an incomplete set of late edition. Goya made these prints after a serious illness that rendered him deaf. The prints are of satirical nature, part fantasy being full of witches, monsters, grotesques, prostitutes and part men part beast figures. They were in part a series of caricatures which satirise the vices and follies of Spanish society, illustrated by witches sporting monk's habits. The words of the inscriptions themselves imply double meanings, which reinforce the satire