Bravo!, plate 38 from Los Caprichos

Bravo!, plate 38 from Los Caprichos — Francisco Goya. 1797/99.

Medium: Etching and aquatint on ivory laid paper. Dimensions: Image: 18.5 × 13 cm (7 5/16 × 5 1/8 in.); Plate: 21.6 × 15.1 cm (8 9/16 × 6 in.); Sheet: 30.1 × 20.8 cm (11 7/8 × 8 1/4 in.).

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

Francisco de Goya wrote acidic commentary to accompany each print in his series The Caprices . For Bravo! he noted, “If ears were all that were needed to appreciate it, no one could listen more intelligently.” Some critical readings of this work interpret it as a commentary on Manuel de Godoy’s parties thrown for King Charles IV. Godoy came to Charles’s palace in Madrid as a musician and left it as prime minister; his meteoric rise is often attributed to a liaison with Queen Maria Louisa. Bravo! suggests the king was oblivious to this relationship to the point of not recognizing what was in front of him.

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.