One of the prize paintings in the Taft Museum of Art's permanent collection is Francisco Goya's oil "Portrait of Queen Maria Luisa of Spain," circa 1800. It's the only painting by the Spanish master — one of art's greatest innovators — in Cincinnati. The face with its powerful gaze, the dark hair holding glittering jewelry and the gauzy and delicate bodice all speak to the confident and astute way Goya could paint. Or does it?  

Francisco Goya produced his famous series of etchings, 1799's 'Los Caprichos,' at a time when narrow-minded religious extremists and other authoritarians were striving to control politics on the one hand while on the other the rise of the Enlightenment represented society's attempt to shift to reasonable thinking. Sound familiar?