Artist: Francisco de Goya

Title: Los Caprichos: Dios la perdone: Y era su madre (God Forgive her: And it was her Mother ) No 16

Ca. 1797 - 1798

Dimensions: 220 x 154 mm

Medium: Etching with burnished aquatint , drypoint and engraving

4th edition

This is a 4th edition print from the Estate of Charles F. Ramus, Denver Colorado. mr. Ramus was a curator of prints and drawings at the Denver Museum and art history professor at the University of Denver. He dedicated over 40 years to collecting fine art prints and drawings with a focus on European artists to include Goya, Toulouse -Lautrec, Paul Gavarni and Odilon Redon to name a few.

The print takes as its starting point the drawing in Album B, 6 . On stage, a young woman is represented who ignores the old woman who follows her. Goya, more than addressing the social vanity or the misery of her alleged mother, the artist satirizes the inhuman attitude of the young woman. About this same anecdote, many pictures of customs, some moralizing, used to be written, where the moving story of a young woman who came from her town to court, went up in the world and forgot about her family until she did not recognize her own family, was told. mother. Glendinning (1976: 27-279) interprets the image as a variation on the theme of Pride (fan) versus Humility (rosary and staff), as the young woman looks over her shoulder at the old woman as in the personification of Pride. . He also admits the more conventional interpretation of false relationships, as the print is integrated into a larger sequence characterized by the presentation of the lack of love between parents and children and between young and old. This scene has also been interpreted as a matchmaker's last advice to her protégé, before she goes to join the gallants seated in the background. The old woman becomes the mother of the young woman in the preparatory drawing and in El Capricho.