Originally conceived as the frontispiece for Los Caprichos, this print depicts an artist asleep at his drawing table.  An ominous mass of nighttime creatures -- bats, owls and a large cat -- emerge from the darkness and converge upon him.  Wide-eyed and agitated, these eighteenth-century symbols of disorder, folly, and superstition stand in sharp contrast to the figure bathed in the light of reason.  Here the macabre dream world serves as a metaphor for imagination, the producer of irrational thoughts and fears.

A preliminary drawing for this print from 1797 was inscribed as follows: “The author dreaming.  His one intention is to banish harmful beliefs commonly held and with this work of Caprichos to perpetuate the solid testimony of truth.”

Goya’s biting satirical commentaries on late eighteenth-century Spain take on some of the same social issues found in the work of an earlier printmaker, William Hogarth.

Leisa Rundquist