The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

the manuscript commentary, in Lefort's French, 1877 “La fantaisie, sans la raison, produit des monstruosités; unies, elles enfantent les vrais artistes et créent des merveilles” Francisco Goya: étude biographique et critique, suivie de l'essai d'un catalogue raisonné de son œuvre gravé et lithographié, catalogue number 43, the commentary Lefort translated from the Spanish manuscript that circulated with the plates.

Symbolica Lefort's French, put into English: fancy without reason produces monstrosities; joined together, the two bring forth true artists and create marvels. The Spanish is lost. Yriarte printed a different French of the same line in 1867, closer to imagination without reason invents absurd monsters, but united with reason she is the mother of the arts and produces marvels. Two translators, one missing original, and the archive says so rather than choosing.

Tap a motif on the picture, or a line below. Its note opens under the line, with the reading its author gave it.

1. Primary motif
2. 1The Demon and the Monsterthe bats above, and the owls crowding in on both sides of the sleeping man
3. Secondary motifs · 1
4. 2The Angel and the Wingthe great owl at his elbow, wings open, holding out the crayon

A man sleeps at his writing desk while owls and bats crowd out of the dark behind him; one owl holds a crayon out to his hand, and a lynx lies awake at the right. The title is written on the side of the desk. By eye

Decoded: every motif is marked, and each mark carries the reading its author gave it, quoted from the text, or says that it is observed on the picture and not read. The composition, the picture read whole in our own words, comes with the entry.