Estan Calientes (They're Hot)

Datelate 18th-early 19th century

Maker Francisco José Goya y Lucientes Spanish, 1746-1828

Label TextWelcome to the eerie and enigmatic world of Los Caprichos! In this astonishing series of prints, Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) takes aim at Spanish society at the close of the 18th century. This was an era marked by numerous social upheavals: the fiscal crises wrought by war and taxation, the shifting power dynamics of the ruling classes, the draconian fanaticism of the Spanish Inquisition, and the turning point in European thought known as the Enlightenment. In sardonic and often surrealistic vignettes, the Los Caprichos series lays bare the outmoded belief systems, irrelevant superstitions, ignorance, decadence, and hypocrisy of the status quo, and it champions reason, justice, social reform, and intellectual freedom. Accompanying texts added by Goya hint at the meaning of each image, which is often obscure to us. Because the series follows no sequential narrative, its stories are open to many interpretations. In this print, Goya calls out the rapaciousness of the clergy. Four monstrous men in monk robes share a meal in a cavernous interior. Two of them shovel food into their gaping mouths, while a third looks on, grinning, and a fourth brings in more food. The caption, which also translates as “They’re in heat,” suggests that these clerics’ voracious appetites extend to pleasures of the flesh. Goya and his enlightened contemporaries considered the clergy to be outrageously greedy and woefully ineffectual—in short, a drain on society.

Object number44.482

Exhibition HistorySeattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, SAM on Paper: Francisco de Goya’s Los Caprichos, October 3, 2025 - March 29, 2026.

Credit LineEugene Fuller Memorial Collection

MediumEtching, aquatint