The NGV’s Los Caprichos impressions are printed on fine quality, off-white, laid paper that was probably sourced from Genoa in Italy’s Ligurian region.49 In 1798 Goya was commissioned by King Carlos IV to decorate the small chapel of San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid and documents reveal he billed the king for 750 sheets of paper from Genoa.50 Considering Goya’s known working practices for painting frescoes, it is unlikely all the paper purchased would have been used for the preliminary fresco drawings, but each imperial size sheet could have been cut into six separate paper supports of the size used to produce Los Caprichos.51 Goya used a range of foreign papers for his drawings, however after 1810 when Napolean’s troops invaded Spain, paper was extremely difficult and expensive to obtain from foreign countries. It is probably for this reason Goya used paper from the Capellades region to produce his working proofs for Desastres de la Guerra.
In preparation for the exhibition Reason and Folly The Prints of Francisco Goya, displayed at NGV in 1998, the NGV Paper Conservation studio took beta-radiographs of all Goya impressions containing watermarks and countermarks.52 A watermark is a distinctive logo of a papermill that is integrated into the paper at the time it is made and is often accompanied by a countermark which is the name of the papermill or paper maker. This study revealed the NGV‘s first edition impressions of La Tauromaquaia contain the BARTOLOME MONGELOS countermark, the MORATO countermark and the SERRA countermark, all originating from the Capellades region of Spain.54 (See figs. 40 and 41). As Goya was closely involved in the printing of this series, it is assumed he was responsible for the choice of paper and his selection is likely to have related to supply and availability, purpose of use, and perhaps a conscious desire to support local craftsmen and industry.53