The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters

Preparatory drawing for Caprice 43, The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters, which in turn is based on Dream 1: Universal Language. On the recto is the preparatory drawing for Caprice 6, Nobody Knows Each Other. 

As in the print, Goya is shown seated and reclining on a table, in this case carved with mouldings and with nothing on top of it. His head is also tucked between his arms, although a small part of his face is slightly visible. Next to him, leaning on the seat and on a painter's suitcase, is a copper plate that seems to represent one of his earliest engravings, the equestrian portrait of Margaret of Austria. 

From its head emanates a beam of lightning from which emerge faces and animal and human heads, some of them deformed, laughing and moaning. Among them all is a self-portrait of Goya, with his face almost straight on, which is arranged at an angle to another.

On the right a series of bats fly overhead, above them a dog and part of a donkey's head with its front legs, and, next to Goya, a lynx that has almost disappeared.