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What a Tailor Can Do! (Lo que puede un sastre!)

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes

European Art

The Caprices (Los Caprichos) is a set of eighty etchings created between 1797 and 1798. On view are thirteen examples of the Brooklyn Museum’s rare “trial proof” set, which is composed of early impressions of a print made by the artist prior to the published edition. In the first part of the series, Goya critiques the characters, institutions, and values of early modern Spanish society; the second focuses on bizarre and macabre imagery.

The most famous image, The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razon produce monstruos), conveys a purposeful ambiguity regarding the conflict between Spanish religiosity and Enlightenment thought: sueño may refer both to the sleep or absence of reason, and to the dream of reason (reason unchecked) that produces monsters. This idea reappears later in the exhibition in Robert Longo’s work.
PORTFOLIO/SERIES Los Caprichos, Plate 52
MEDIUM Etching and aquatint on laid paper
  • Place Made: Spain
  • DATES 1797–1798
    DIMENSIONS Sheet: 11 7/8 x 8 in. (30.2 x 20.3 cm) Image: 7 11/16 x 4 7/8 in. (19.5 x 12.4 cm)  (show scale)
    INSCRIPTIONS Upper right in plate: "52."; lower center in plate: "Lo que puede un sastre."
    COLLECTIONS European Art
    ACCESSION NUMBER 37.33.52
    CREDIT LINE A. Augustus Healy Fund, Frank L. Babbott Fund, and Carll H. de Silver Fund
    CATALOGUE DESCRIPTION Trial proof before the exclamation point.
    MUSEUM LOCATION This item is not on view
    CAPTION Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828). What a Tailor Can Do! (Lo que puede un sastre!), 1797–1798. Etching and aquatint on laid paper, Sheet: 11 7/8 x 8 in. (30.2 x 20.3 cm). Brooklyn Museum, A. Augustus Healy Fund, Frank L. Babbott Fund, and Carll H. de Silver Fund, 37.33.52 (Photo: , 37.33.52_PS9.jpg)
    STATE Trial proof
    IMAGE overall, 37.33.52_PS9.jpg., 2017
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