眼鏡をかけた自画像

Around 1799 Goya published the Caprichos, a set of 80 etchings mocking the follies and superstitions of Spanish society. Preparing the small copper plates was close, straining work, and he wore spectacles made for it. This self-portrait, painted about 1800, shows him in those very glasses, glancing up as if from the plate. By now Goya was completely deaf, an illness in the 1790s having taken his hearing, and he was official painter to King Charles IV while privately producing the sharpest satire of his age. He shows himself plainly, in a simple jacket with no court finery. A near-identical version hangs in Bayonne, and scholars still argue over which of the two Goya set down first.