Goya’s Caprichos, just like his Sueños, are preparatory sketches that he later turned into engravings. All the ones you can see here were drawn using sanguine, which was the technique Goya favoured the most when transferring drawings onto the metal plate in order to create the master template that would be used to make prints on paper of the definitive drawing.

In the Caprichos, Goya depicted things that he didn’t like about the society in which he lived. Thanks to his drawings and those of other artists from this time, we know what it was like living in Spain during those years.

The Caprichos mainly deal with four subjects. The marriages of those who marry only for money without being in love; the negative consequences of receiving a bad education at home and school; the things that adults do wrong and that they still do wrong because no one questions it; and the abuses of the strong over the weak. Can you identify them in the drawings? Do these things still happen today?