Bien tirada esta - Goya Capricho 17 - Original Etching, 5th Ed. 1881-86

Original etching by Francisco de Goya, «Bien tirada está» (It is nicely stretched), number 17 of the series Los Caprichos, in the fifth edition printed by the Calcografía Nacional between 1881 and 1886. A young woman adjusts her stocking under the eye of a bawd, against a very dark aquatint ground that isolates the two figures.

Los Caprichos (1799) is Goya's first great satirical series: eighty subjects on superstition, social hypocrisy and the abuses of the clergy and of the courts. Goya ceded the coppers to the Crown in 1803, and they have been kept ever since at the Calcografía Nacional, which reissued them several times through the 19th century; this is the fifth printing.

Medium: Etching and burnished aquatint on heavy unwatermarked wove paper.
Artist / after: Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828).
Engraver: Goya himself.
Date: Fifth edition, 1881-1886 (copper engraved in 1799).
Source: Los Caprichos, fifth edition of the Calcografía Nacional; album leaf, bound along the upper margin and with Goya's self-portrait on the cover.
Dimensions: Plate mark 5.9 x 7.9 in (15 x 20 cm); sheet 10.2 x 14.4 in (26 x 36.5 cm).
Condition: Dense impression and of great contrast. Foxing scattered through the margins, some of medium size at the left.