Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)

Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the best known image from Goya's series of 80 aquatint etchings published in 1799 known as 'Los Caprichos' that are generally understood as the artist's criticism of the society in which he lived. Goya worked on the series from around 1796-98 and many drawings for the prints survive. The inscription on the preparatory drawing for this print, now in the Prado Museum in Madrid, indicates that it was originally intended as the title page to the series. In the published edition, this print became plate 43, the number we can see in the top right corner. Nevertheless, it has come to symbolise the overall meaning of the series, what happens when reason is absent. Various animals including bats and owls fly above the sleeping artist, and at the lower right a lynx watches vigilantly alerting us to the rise of monstrous forces that we are able to control when sleep descends.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)Plate 43 from "Los Caprichos": The sleep of reason produces monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.