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The powerful originality and creative vision of the Spanish master, Francisco Goya, have fascinated and enthralled viewers for the past 200 years. In the late-eighteenth century, the artist first attracted Spanish royal attention with a set of decorative tapestry designs; subsequently he was appointed court painter in 1786 and First Court Painter in 1799. While executing public paintings and imperial portraits in his official capacity, Goya channeled his private expressions of distaste for human vices and folly into the graphic series, Los Caprichos. A master of etching and aquatint, Goya used this democratic art form to indict, among other things, the vanity and vacuity of the nobility, the gluttony of monks, the venality of judges, the stupidity of blind faith, the lust and lechery of gender relations, and the prevalence of superstition. After only two weeks of advertising in 1799, the eighty prints were suddenly withdrawn from publication, perhaps because they were found objectionable by the Inquisition. In an effort to preserve his work, four years later the artist offered Los Caprichos to King Charles IV of Spain, who accepted the present of both the unsold copies and the plates. Due to this fortunate turn of events, Goya's caricatural renderings of human blunders, prejudices, and conceits eventually became available to a wide audience.
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