The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters (El sueño de la razón produce monstruos)

1799

Etching and aquatint; plate 21.2 × 15.1 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

A sleeping artist slumps over his desk while owls and bats crowd in behind him. It became the best-known plate of the Caprichos, an 80-print series of social satire sold as a set.

Before becoming plate 43, the design was probably meant to open the series, judging from a preparatory drawing now in the Prado.
Look at the lynx at lower right: it stays wide awake while the sleeper is swarmed.
Aquatint lays the grainy dark tone behind the swarm of creatures.
Prints let the artist put his own satirical commentary before a wide public. Frederick Ilchman (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston talk, 2014) notes that sueño means both sleep and dream, so the title reads two ways.
Given to the Met by the dealers M. Knoedler & Co. in 1918.

Aquatint: An etching method that uses a dusting of resin on the plate to print areas of tone rather than lines.

Image: The Met Open Access · CC0