Goya’s The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters is an etching, specifically an etching combined with aquatint.
Francisco de Goya created the image as plate 43 of Los Caprichos, his influential series of 80 prints first published in 1799. It shows a figure asleep at a desk while owls, bats, and other creatures gather around him. The scene turns the phrase “the sleep of reason produces monsters” into a warning about imagination, superstition, and unrestrained irrationality.
Etching involves drawing through a protective ground so acid can bite lines into a metal plate. Aquatint, used alongside the etching, creates broad areas of tone and shadow. That combination gave Goya’s print its unusually dark, smoky atmosphere.
The work is often called a painting because Goya was chiefly known as a painter, but it is a print on paper. Another common mistake is to describe the medium as only aquatint; the most complete description is etching and aquatint.