XIX

Conclusion

When viewing Goya’s prints, we are looking at the very last step of a multi-stage process, often involving many changes to the copperplate matrix. These changes reflect the evolving composition and wear to the copperplate through use. To achieve different gradations of tone and to make compositional adjustments, a copperplate might go through many acid baths, and numerous alterations might be made to the matrix by burnishing, scraping, direct etching and the addition of dry point or engraved lines. In this mix of variables is the fact printmaking is a kind of alchemy and unexpected, sometimes serendipitous things, happen during the etching and printing process.

When Goya died, Ceán Bermúdez remembered him as ‘an original artist of astonishing talent and imagination, skilled in the handling of color and in his use of brushes, burin, etching, and recently lithography who seeks to convey a sense of the world around him through inimitable illusionistic effects and startling truth to life.’⁶⁴ Studying Goya’s NGV prints in detail, identifying the techniques used to create them, and the order they may have been executed, highlights Goya’s command of intaglio printmaking techniques.