Out Hunting for Teeth, plate twelve from Los Caprichos

Out Hunting for Teeth, plate twelve from Los Caprichos — Francisco Goya. 1797/99.

Medium: Etching, burnished aquatint and burin on ivory laid paper. Dimensions: Image: 18.4 × 11.9 cm (7 1/4 × 4 11/16 in.); Plate: 22 × 15.2 cm (8 11/16 × 6 in.); Sheet: 30.1 × 20.7 cm (11 7/8 × 8 3/16 in.).

Collection record: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Museum connection according to this source; current display unverified.

Goya produced his Caprices , a series of 88 prints, between 1797 and 1799. Here, he satirizes love’s ability to drive a person to foolishness. A terrorized young woman stands on her toes on a ledge. With one hand she shields herself with a handkerchief, and with the other she pulls teeth from a hanged corpse, which she will use to cast a love spell. The tonal values achieved by aquatint highlight the lifeless body’s countenance as well as the young woman’s handkerchief. Goya may be referring to a traditional star-crossed romance, La Celestina , in which the tooth-potion goes awry.

Description: © Art Institute of Chicago, original record, CC BY 4.0. HTML formatting removed; wording retained. Other artwork metadata: CC0.

Source: official collection record. Metadata selected and normalized by Artline from the source export, accessed 10 September 2026; no museum endorsement. Reproduction rights are separate.