Bobalicón (Simpleton). Plate 4 from: Disparates (Follies)

Los disparates (The Follies), also known as Proverbios (Proverbs) or <em>Suen</em><em>os</em> (Dreams) is a series of prints in aquatint and etching, with retouching in drypoint and burin, created by the famous Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya between 1815 and 1823. Goya created the series while he lived in his house near Manzanares (Quinta del Sordo) on the walls of which he painted the famous Black Paintings. When he left to France and moved in Bordeaux in 1824, he left these works in Madrid apparently incomplete. During Goya's lifetime, the series was not published because of the oppressive political climate and the Inquisition. The disparates series was first published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in 1864 under the title Proverbios (Proverbs). In this edition, the titles given to the works are Spanish proverbs. On proofs of many plates there are titles handwritten by Goya, which include the word Disparate (Folly). The series is an enigmatic album of 22 prints (in the first place 18 - 4 works were added later) and is the last such undertaking by Goya in his lifetime. The scenes of the Disparates, which are difficult to explain, include dark, dream-like scenes that scholars have related to political issues, traditional proverbs and the Spanish carnival.

In this famous nightmarish scene, Plate 4 from the series, a childlike giant dances towards two smaller figures, a frightened man hiding behind a taller female figure. Clicking his castanets, the colossus smiles with spine-chilling delight as two shrieking demons emerge from the darkness behind him. Goya highlighted the figure's demonic smile, large chest, and castanets by using stopping-out varnish to prevent the acid from biting these passages so that they appear white against the richly aquatinted plate. In a preparatory drawing, the small, frightened man is depicted as a monk or priest hiding behind what might be an image of the Virgin Mary. Goya altered this detail in the print to create more ambiguity.

The dating is from the time the plate was produced, though prints were not made from the plate by Goya. The first edition dates from 1864; this print was produced in the third edition (1891), published as <em>Los Proverbios</em> (<em>Proverbs</em>).

See:

Minneapolis Institute of Art, https://collections.artsmia.org/art/58290/bobalicon-francisco-jose-de-goya-y-lucientes

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_disparates

Dr Mark Stocker     Curator, Historical International Art      July 2017