QuotesCosmos
a note on an etching-plate, 1795/96; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 195
• Plate 61 of 'Los Caprichos' represents a beautiful lady flying with outstretched arms in butterfly fashion, but supported at the feet by three grotesque creatures crouched in the attitude of the carved misers under monkish stalls. Upon a copy of this plate Goya scrawled this note
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The group of sorcerers who form the support for our elegant lady are more for ornament than real use. Some heads are so charged with inflammable gas that they have no need for balloons or sorcerers in order to fly away.

— Francisco Goya

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "The group of sorcerers who form the support for our elegant lady are more for ornament than real use. Some heads are so charged with inflammable gas that they have no need for balloons or sorcerers in order to fly away." in the context of "a note on an etching-plate, 1795/96; as quoted in Francisco Goya, Hugh Stokes, Herbert Jenkins Limited Publishers, London, 1914, p. 195
• Plate 61 of 'Los Caprichos' represents a beautiful lady flying with outstretched arms in butterfly fashion, but supported at the feet by three grotesque creatures crouched in the attitude of the carved misers under monkish stalls. Upon a copy of this plate Goya scrawled this note" to mean that wisdom is timeless.

Source: Wikiquote: "Francisco Goya" (Quotes of Francisco Goya: sorted chronologically, by date of the quotes of Francisco Goya, 1790s) The 'What it means' explanation text was generated by Google Gemini Flash (accessed January 18, 2026). https://gemini.google.com/app

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#Francisco Goya#sorcerers#inflammable#ornament#balloons#support#elegant#charged#group#heads#order#form
Francisco Goya

About Francisco Goya

Francisco Goya (30 March 1746 – 16 April 1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker. He was a court painter to the Spanish Crown and a chronicler of history. His letters to Martín Zapater y Clavería https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q3915977, (1746-1803) a prosperous merchant and Goya's closest friend - spanning some 30 years, are an important private source for Goya's quotes; these letters show him at his most intimate and uninhibited.