Neither more nor less

Seated on a bucket, a monkey acts as a painter, holding a brush in his hand and a palette in the other. He is portraying an ass posing before him, although the ape depicts him in a different way, dressed in a golilla as if he were a magistrate.

Goya uses aquatint throughout the composition except for the donkey's head and the ape's palette. The drypoint is clearly visible on the donkey's nose and the burin on the monkey's back. The painter has left the donkey's head lighter than the rest to emphasise that the monkey's portrait of him does not coincide with the true image of the animal.

In this engraving there is a difference with respect to the drawing that implies some different nuances in the interpretation of the two works. The fact that he is sitting on a bucket on which we can read " Do not die of hunger" leads us to think that in the drawing the object of the mockery is the monkey, while in the engraving the satire is directed at the donkey. This mockery of the donkey is very well explained in the manuscripts on the Caprices series of which we are aware, especially the one in the National Library, which states the following: "An animal that is portrayed will not cease to appear to be an animal for that reason, even if it is painted with its gourd and affected gravity".

The monopainter represents his clients as they wish; thus the donkey tries, in the portrait painted by the false painter, to appear to be what he is not. He has therefore asked him to hide his donkey's ears under a wig, although he does not succeed in erasing his own nature.

Edith Helman believes that this Caprice should be related to the fable of The Painter in Fables in Castilian Verse by José Agustín Ibáñez de la Rentería (Bilbao, 1751-Lequeitio, 1826). In this text the writer narrates how a painter must accommodate himself to the tastes of his clientele in order not to starve to death, as the inscription on Goya's preparatory drawing reads.

Some specialists have seen in this image a satire of Manuel Godoy (Badajoz, 1767-Paris, 1851), who was portrayed by Antonio Carnicero (Salamanca, 1748-Madrid, 1814) according to his demands.

It is possible that one of the visual sources to which Goya may have had recourse for the engraving we are dealing with here is the painting by David Teniers entitled The Monkey Painter (1650, Prado Museum, Madrid) or perhaps he may have been familiar with the painting of the same title by Jean-Baptiste Simeon Chardin (Paris, 1699-Paris, 1779).

This print forms part of the series of "asnerías" that Goya produced between engravings Nos. 37 and 42 of The Caprices, in which this animal becomes the mechanism for censuring human stupidity.