Allegorical caprice. The Avarice

Allegorical Caprice: The Avarice, painted in 1852 and now in the Lázaro Galdiano Museum in Madrid, represents Eugenio Lucas Velázquez's most direct engagement with Goya's tradition of morally satirical fantasy. The term 'caprice' explicitly invokes Goya's Caprichos—the celebrated print series in which allegorical and fantastical subjects served as vehicles for social and moral criticism. Lucas Velázquez painted a series of allegorical capriccios treating the seven deadly sins and related vices, of which this representation of Avarice is among the most sustained. The subject allowed him to combine grotesque figuration, symbolic still-life elements, and atmospheric darkness in a manner that pushed his Goyaesque tendencies toward the Romantic fantastic. The Lázaro Galdiano Museum, which specialises in Spanish art and decorative arts, holds the most significant single collection of Lucas Velázquez's allegorical capriccios.

Allegorical capricci demanded a different technical register from Lucas Velázquez's crowd scenes: concentrated compositions with fewer figures, stronger chiaroscuro creating an almost theatrical spotlight on symbolic objects, and paint handling that emphasises the material qualities of gold, flesh, and shadow with equal intensity.