They've Already Got a Seat (Ya tienen asiento)

Los Caprichos, Goya's famous series of satirical etchings and aquatints, consists of eighty plates with text. "Since the artist is convinced that the censure of human errors and vices … may also be the object of painting," he wrote in 1799, "he has chosen subjects adequate for his work [Los Caprichos], from the multitude of follies and blunders common in every civil society, as well as from the vulgar prejudices, and lies authorized by custom, ignorance or interest, those that he has thought most suitable for ridicule as well as for exercising the artificer's fancy."

In plate 26 of Los Caprichos, two young ladies, blindly following the vicissitudes of fashion to the point of immodesty, wear their petticoats and upturned chairs on their heads—much to the mocking amusement of onlookers. With his title Ya tienen asiento, Goya makes a play on the Spanish word asiento which means both "seat" and "judgment," suggesting that these young ladies are thinking with their bottoms.

Considered the earliest proof set extant, the Museum's Los Caprichos is from the first and second states prior to the first edition. The quality of the impressions in the Museum's set is unsurpassed.