Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, 
Spanish 1746-1828- 
Que viene el coco (Here comes the...

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, 
Spanish 1746-1828- 

Que viene el coco (Here comes the Bogeyman): Plate 3 from 'Los Caprichos'; 

etching with burnished aquatint, drypoint and engraving, on laid paper, a fine impression from the First Edition, published by the artist, Madrid, 1799, numbered 'P.3' (within the plate, upper right), 21.5 x 15.3 cm. (unframed/mounted). 

Provenance: 
Presumably Manuel Fernández Durán y Pando, Marqués de Perales del Río (1818-1886), Madrid. 
Don Pedro Fernández-Durán (1846-1930), Madrid; with his stamp [Lugt 747b]; presumably by descent from the above. 
Don Tomas de la Maza y Saavedra (1896-1975); gift from the above. 
with Herman Shickman Fine Arts, New York. 
with Stuart Denenberg, Los Angeles. 
Private American Collection; acquired from the above. 
'The Sleep of Reason: Francisco Goya's Los Caprichos', Christie's, New York, 23 October 2020, lot 3. 

Exhibited: 
Landau Traveling Exhibitions, Various locations, 2005-2016. 

Note: 
This is 'the third plate in Los Caprichos, in which a mother frightens her children with the figure of the coco, or bogey-man, an imaginary being that was a common feature of Spanish popular culture. In the eighteenth century, the terrible coco was defined, according to the Diccionario de autoridades (1729), as a horrifying, ugly figure ... invented to frighten and control children. In the view of Enlightenment thinkers, teaching based on fear produced grave consequences when the child reached adulthood, for superstition reduced its capacity to reason, and intimidation turned it into a servile citizen, dominated by the force of authority…In addition to censuring bad practices in the education of children, however, this Capricho may have had another meaning, namely a moral judgement against adultery. The majority of the manuscript commentaries identify the phantasm with the woman´s lover: Bad mothers scare their children with the coco so they can speak alone with their lovers. In contrast to the children´s expressions of fear in this print, the mother´s spellbound look would seem to give her away. In the preparatory sketch in sanguine, one notes lines that have been described as the canopy of a bed, and below the mantle worn by the bogey-man, one can see the tips of the figure´s shoes, the same type that customers of prostitutes wear in other prints in the series.’ 
Blas Benito, J.: Portrait of Spain. Masterpieces from the Prado, Queensland Art Gallery-Art Exhibitions Australia, 2012, p. 212.