‘Esto si que es leer’: learning to read Goya'sLos Caprichos

Abstract

Abstract The most overlooked aspect of Francisco de Goya's Los Caprichos (1799) is the nature of its images. Students of this series have not raised this issue because they have invariably assumed that its So engravings function autonomously as hieroglyphs capable of precise translation, which in turn has given rise to two incompatible spectrums of opinion regarding their content. Traditionally-minded art historians view the series as a straightforward espousal of Enlightenment values, a satire on the unenlightened practices of a reactionary, church-dominated Spanish society with which Goya's intellectual circle offriends found great fault.1 They consider Los Caprichos an appeal to overturn the monstrous rule of unreason. Propounded with increasing frequency in recent years, the alternate reading attributes to Goya a Romantic sensibility and reaches an opposite conclusion: Goya is actually criticizing the doctrine of reason.2 However much they may disagree on the content of this series, the readings have proceeded on the assumption that it was Goya's intention to represent imagistically a well-defined intellectual position that coincides with the celebrated phrase of capricho 43, El sueño de la razón produce monstruos.