Francisco de Goya

The bogeyman is coming

Clasificación
The bogeyman is coming
Datos Generales
Cronología
Ca. 1797 - 1799
Dimensiones
219 x 154 mm
Técnica y soporte
Etching and burnished aquatint
Reconocimiento de la autoría de Goya
Undisputed work
Ficha: realización/revisión
10 Nov 2010 / 29 May 2024
Inventario
225
Inscripciones

Que viene el Coco (at the bottom). 
P.3. (in the upper right corner)

Historia

See Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, Painter.

There are several state proofs, none of which is prior to the aquatint. One of them has the title and numbering written in black pencil. In the title, the b for "viene" is crossed out and replaced by a v, as confusion between b and v was very common at the time, which led to the copper engraving with a b.

A preparatory drawing for this engraving is in the Prado Museum.

Análisis artístico

In the centre of the print, slightly shifted to the right, we can see a figure completely covered in a tunic looking at a seated mother holding her two children. One of them raises his arms and seems to want to flee in terror, while the other clings to the mother figure in search of protection.

Goya used aquatint for the background and etching to create the folds in the tunic of the figure who is frightening the children, as well as the mother and the children.

In the manuscripts on the meaning of The Caprices, several clarifications are made about the meaning of this print. The one in the Prado Museum states that this work "represents the disastrous abuse of early education. Making a child more afraid of the Coco than of his father and forcing him to fear what does not exist". The Ayala manuscript notes that Goya depicted how "mothers frighten their children with the Coco to talk to their lovers", while the National Library manuscript states that "foolish mothers make children fearful by depicting the Coco; and others worse use this artifice to be alone with their lovers when they cannot keep their children away from them".

The bogeyman was a figure used to reprimand and frighten children when they did not behave properly. In a 17th-century song that alludes to this figure, whose morphology is unknown to us, the following is said: "Duerma y sosiegue/ que a la fe que venga el coco/ si no se duerme" ("Sleep and be calm/ that the bogeyman will come to faith/ if he does not sleep"). In this image, the Aragonese painter, from the perspective of an enlightened man, emphasises the importance of education and the need for children to grow up free of superstition and ghosts.

At the same time, this work admits a second reading that would have to do with the criminals who took advantage of the superstitions of the people to commit their misdeeds by entering houses at night, disguised as spectral beings. This is explained by Fray Benito Jerónimo Feijóo (Casdemiro, Pereiro de Aguiar, 1676-Oviedo, 1764) who in his work Theatro crítico universal (1726-1739) says the following: "(...) O quantos hurtos, quantos estrupos, y adulterios se han cometido, cubriendo, ó los agresores, ó los medianeros con la capa de Duendes! These heavy mockeries were stopped, or stopped whenever in the house where they took place, there was a man of spirit, who intrepidly endeavoured to examine the truth. Where the whole family is made up of easily credulous people, deceit is sure to triumph, unless some accident reveals it".

To capture this world of the unreal, Goya may have drawn on images by the painter Salvator Rosa (Naples 1620-Rome, 1673), whose work he was probably familiar with during his stay in Italy (1769-1771), when he was still a budding artist. The haunting figure in Goya's engraving recalls the protagonist of Rosa's painting The Shadow of Samuel Appears to Saul (1668, Musée du Louvre, Paris). Furthermore, the appropriate treatment of the panneggio by which Goya has succeeded in giving corporeality to the canvases in which the anatomy is concealed is related to the figures that Charon is carrying in his boat as he crosses the Stygian Lagoon in the work by Pierre Subleyras (Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, 1699- Rome, 1749) entitled Charon carrying the shadows (ca. 1735, Musée du Louvre, Paris).

The theme of education was again addressed in prints no. 4, The rollona, and no. 25, The Pitcher Broke from the series of The Caprices.

This engraving aroused the interest of Eugène Delacroix (Charenton-Saint-Maurice, 1798-Paris, 1836), who copied it using the aquatint technique (ca. 1830, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris).

Conservación

The plate is preserved in the National Chalcography (no. 174).

Exposiciones
  • Goya. Gemälde Zeichnungen. Graphik. Tapisserien
    Kunsthalle Basel
    Basle
    1953
    from January 23th to April 12th 1953
  • De grafiek van Goya
    Rijksmuseum Rijksprentenkabinet
    Amsterdam
    1970
    from November 13th 1970 to January 17th 1971
  • El arte de Goya
    Museo de Arte Occidental de Tokio
    Tokyo
    1971
    from 16th 1971 to January 23th 1972. Exhibited also at the Kyoto Municipal Museum of Art, January 29th to March 15th 1972.
  • Goya. Das Zeitalter der Revolucionen. Kunst um 1800 (1980 – 1981)
    Hamburger Kunsthalle
    Hamburg
    1980
  • Goya dans les collections suisses
    Fundación Pierre Gianadda
    Martigny
    1982
    consultant editor Pierre Gassier. From June 12th to August 29th 1982
  • Goya y el espíritu de la Ilustración
    Museo Nacional del Prado
    Madrid
    1988
    from October 6th to December 18th 1988. Exhibited also at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, January 18th to March 26th 1989; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nueva York, May 9th to July 16th 1989, Madrid curator Manuela B. Mena Marqués, scientific directors Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Eleanor A. Sayre
  • Goya. La década de Los Caprichos
    Madrid
    1992
    organized by Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando sponsored by Fundación Central Hispano, Madrid, consultant editor Nigel Glendinnig. From October 26th 1992 to January 10th 1993
  • Francisco de Goya
    Museo d'Arte Moderna
    Lugano
    1996
    exhibition celebrated from September 22nd to November 17th.
  • Ydioma universal: Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    Biblioteca Nacional
    Madrid
    1996
    from September 19th to December 15th 1996
  • Francisco Goya. Sein leben im spiegel der graphik. Fuendetodos 1746-1828 Bordeaux. 1746-1996
    Galerie Kornfeld
    Bern
    1996
    from November 21st 1996 to January 1997
  • Francisco Goya. Capricci, follie e disastri della guerra
    San Donato Milanese
    2000
    Opere grafiche della Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta
  • Goya e la tradizione italiana
    Fondazione Magnani Rocca
    Mamiano di Traversetolo (Parma)
    2006
    consultant editors Fred Licht and Simona Tosini Pizzetti. From September 9th to December 3th 2006
  • Goya. Opera grafica
    Pinacoteca del Castello di San Giorgio
    Legnano
    2006
    exhibition celebrated from December 16th 2006 to April 1st 2007
  • Goya e Italia
    Museo de Zaragoza
    Zaragoza
    2008
    organized by the Fundación Goya en Aragóna, consultant editor Joan Sureda Pons. From June 1st to September 15th 2008
  • Goya et la modernité
    Pinacothèque de Paris
    París
    2013
    from October 11st 2013 to March 16th 2014
  • Agen
    2019
  • 2022
Bibliografía
  • HARRIS, Tomás
    Goya engravings and lithographs, vol. I y II.
    OxfordBruno Cassirer
    1964
    cat. 38, p.73
  • GASSIER, Pierre y WILSON, Juliet
    Vie et ouvre de Francisco de Goya
    ParísOffice du livre
    1970
    p.176, cat. 455
  • GLENDINNING, Nigel (Comisario)
    La década de los Caprichos. Retratos 1792-1804
    MadridReal Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
    1992
    cat. 44-45, pp.74-76
  • MENA, Manuela B. y WILSON-BAREAU, Juliet (comisarias)
    Goya. El capricho y la invención. Cuadros de gabinete, bocetos y miniaturas
    MadridMuseo del Prado
    1993
    p.47, fig. 23
  • SANTIAGO, Elena M. (coordinadora)
    Catálogo de las estampas de Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    MadridMinisterio de Educación y Cultura, Biblioteca Nacional
    1996
    cat. 90-91, pp.74-75
  • BLAS BENITO, Javier, MATILLA RODRÍGUEZ, José Manuel y MEDRANO, José Miguel
    El libro de los caprichos: dos siglos de interpretaciones (1799-1999). Catálogo de los dibujos, pruebas de estado, láminas de cobre y estampas de la primera edición
    MadridMuseo Nacional del Prado
    1999
    pp.68-71
  • POU, Anna
    Francisco Goya. Los Caprichos
    BarcelonaEdiciones de la Central
    2011
    p.42
  • OROPESA, Marisa and RINCÓN GARCÍA, Wilfredo
    ParísPinacoteca de París
    2013
    p. 201
  • WILSON BAREAU, Juliet
    Goya. In the Norton Simon Museum
    PasadenaNorton Simon Museum
    2016
    pp. 42-75
  • MOTTIN, Bruno, EFEDAQUE, Adrien and WILSON-BAREU, Juliet
    AgenSnoeck
    2019
    p. 142
  • TORAL OROPESA, María and MARTÍN MEDINA, Víctor
    Museo de Bellas Artes de Badajoz y Diputación de Badajoz
    2022
    p. 29
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