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General Folly, plate nine from The Proverbs

A work made of etching and burnished aquatint on ivory wove paper.
CC0 Public Domain Designation

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  • A work made of etching and burnished aquatint on ivory wove paper.

Date:

1815/24

Artist:

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Spanish, 1746-1828

About this artwork

General Folly is the most enigmatic print from one of Francisco de Goya’s most thematically obscure series. When it was finally published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando decades after the artist’s death—a delay presumably caused by the repressive political environment in Madrid during his lifetime—each sheet was given a Spanish proverb as its title, though the artist himself captioned them “follies.” This work was joined with the proverb “the claws of a cat and the dress of a devotee,” or “Vice is often clothed in Virtue’s habit.”

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Prints and Drawings

Artist

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

Title

General Folly, plate nine from The Proverbs

Place

Spain (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1815–1824

Medium

Etching and burnished aquatint on ivory wove paper

Dimensions

Image: 21.7 × 32.4 cm (8 9/16 × 12 13/16 in.); Plate: 24.5 × 35.2 cm (9 11/16 × 13 7/8 in.); Sheet: 33.2 × 49.6 cm (13 1/8 × 19 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

The Charles Deering Collection

Reference Number

1927.3318

IIIF Manifest  The International Image Interoperability Framework (IIIF) represents a set of open standards that enables rich access to digital media from libraries, archives, museums, and other cultural institutions around the world.

Learn more.

https://api.artic.edu/api/v1/artworks/129716/manifest.json

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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