A preparatory drawing for the etching, Capricho 50. The Chinchillas (G02138). The group of twenty-six pen drawings that constitute the basis for The Caprichos in its initial phase, make up the Dreams series. Beginning with Dream 1, The Author Dreaming, they draw on a customary 18th-century subject. The plate mark indicates that this drawing was transferred, but no proof is known, and the handwritten number has disappeared. The print and preparatory drawing are not identical. The women and the male figure holding a spoon are not present in the Capricho. We know the subject from handwritten notations by Valentín Cardera at both the Biblioteca Nacional and the Museo del Prado. Both clarify that this is social criticism. As the first observes: Those idiots who boast of being noblemen always wear their family history on their chests, lazily lolling and fanatically reciting the Rosary as they yawn. Ignorance is their fodder and their understanding is closed and locked. The drawing’s meaning is completed by the second notation: Whoever hears nothing, knows nothing and does nothing belongs to the huge family of the Chinchillas [the protagonists of José de Cañizares’s comedy, Old Professor Lucas] that have always been a pack of good-for-nothings. The Museo del Prado has a series of works related to Dream 17, including another preparatory drawing (D03950) and both the first and second edition of Capricho 50 (G00757 / G02138). Calcografía Nacional in Madrid has a steel-plated copper plate from the same series (207 x 151 mm, 421.62 g. No. 3476). Moreover, the drawing bears the mark of the 200 x 150 mm copper plate to which its image was transferred, as well as vertical laid lines (Text from Matilla, J. M. and others: El libro de los Caprichos. Francisco de Goya: dos siglos de interpretaciones, 1799-1999. Catálogo de los dibujos, pruebas de estado, láminas de cobre y estampas de la primera edición, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid, 1999. pp. 21, 270).