Plate 18 from ‘Los Caprichos’: And his house is on fire (Ysele quema la Casa.)

Description

In And his house is on fire, a drunken man attends to a chamber vessel while his house burns behind him, absorbed in an immediate concern as catastrophe grows nearby. Francisco Goya’s And His House Is on Fire makes this failure of attention comically visible. The scene’s ordinary bodily activity becomes absurd through its disproportion to the danger surrounding it.

Published in 1799 as plate 18 of Los Caprichos, the etching and burnished aquatint give the figure a substantial presence within a darkened setting. Goya’s caption names what the man seems unable to recognize. The image’s satire concerns judgment clouded by indulgence, where an urgent threat cannot compete with a smaller private preoccupation. Its sharpness lies in that mismatch of scale, turning a domestic mishap into a vivid account of the consequences of neglecting what matters most.

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