Featured on PDR in the collection The Whims (1799) and The Follies (1815–23) of Francisco Goya

At some point in late 1792 or early 1793, the great Spanish artist Francisco de Goya was struck by a severe and undiagnosed illness which left him deaf and disillusioned, and marked the beginning of his so-called "mid period" (1793–99) which saw his work became progressively darker and pessimistic. The crowning achievement of these troubled years was a set of eighty aquatinted etchings created between 1797 and 1798, and published in 1799 as Los caprichos (The Whims). Produced alongside more official commissions, the visionary prints depict what Goya described as "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual". The criticisms of the eighteenth-century Spain in…