Plate 34 from ‘Los Caprichos’: Sleep overcomes them (Las rinde el Sueño.)

Description

In Sleep overcomes them, women slump into sleep, their bodies gathered in postures that suggest exhaustion rather than peaceful repose. Francisco Goya’s Sleep Overcomes Them turns the surrender of wakefulness into a shared human condition. The figures’ closeness provides little reassurance, as each seems absorbed in a separate withdrawal from the surrounding world.

Plate 34 of Los Caprichos, published in 1799, uses etching and burnished aquatint to distinguish the sleepers within a dark setting. The title emphasizes a force acting on them, making rest sound less like a choice than a defeat. Goya’s interest lies in the expressiveness of posture: a lowered head or collapsed form can suggest the pressures of a life without recounting its history. The result is an intimate image whose stillness retains an undercurrent of unease.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Goya collection.