The Chinchillas (Los Chinchillas) Plate 50 from: Los Caprichos

Prado manuscript: ‘He who hears nothing, knows nothing and does nothing belongs to the numerous family of the Chinchillas which has never accomplished anything.’

‘In the case of this Capricho, the Ayala text of 1799-1803 rather unusually is less specific than the Prado text in that it does not refer directly to ‘Los Chinchillas’: ‘Those idiots, who pride themselves on their nobility, let themselves go to laziness and superstition. They close off their understanding with padlocks while they are grossly fed by Ignorance’. The ‘Chinchillas’ to which the given title of this work refers, concerns a play written by José de Cahizares El Dömine Lucas in which a family named Chinchilla attaches an extraordinary importance to its family's noble background. In Goya's preliminary drawing (at the Prado) and in the final etching, two apparent members of the totally decadent Chinchilla family each with his ears padlocked, are being spoon-fed. The two nobles are totally encased and weighted down by their coats-of-arms. Unable to move, they are given food (being unable to provide it for themselves) in the drawing by two apparent prostitutes and in the etching by a figure whose blindfold and donkey's ears could only represent Ignorance. A second drawing at the Prado is closest to the final etching. The clear subject here is what Goya and the Enlightened felt to be undeserved power through inherited titles.’

Johnson, R. S., Francisco Goya, Los Caprichos, R.S. Johnson Fine Art, Chicago, 1992, pp. 126-128.