Wizards and witches offering a new-born baby to their master. Etching by F. Goya, 1796/1798.

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [1796/1798]

1 print : etching with aquatint ; platemark 22 x 15 cm

Obesquio à el maestro. English translation of lettering: "Homage to the master" Bears number: 47

Wellcome Collection 36917i

"Los Caprichos" are a set of eighty etchings/aquatints made by Francisco Goya y Lucientes between the years 1796-98. They were first published and advertised for sale in Madrid papers in 1799. Very few copies were purchased and in 1803, having sold only twenty-seven copies, Goya offered the copperplates together with 240 unsold sets to Charles IV in exchange for a pension for his son, Javier. The next edition was published in the mid-nineteenth century and the last edition was made in Madrid in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War. Goya made these prints after a serious illness that rendered him deaf. The prints are of satirical nature, part fantasy being full of witches, monsters, grotesques, prostitutes and part men part beast figures. They were in part a series of caricatures which satirise the vices and follies of Spanish society, illustrated by witches sporting monk's habits. The words of the inscriptions themselves imply double meanings, which reinforce the satire