selfcentered forms of artifice, altering their physical appearance, for example, through fashion,
hairdressing and cosmetics.
Meanwhile, artists often reacted to views of their trade that reduced it to artifice and illusionism. In
Goya’s print series Los Caprichos he satirized the selfdelusion and vanity of an obsession with
superficial appearances and forms of disguise. In the print Until Death (Plate 55, Hasta la muerte) an old
woman pays embarrassing attention to her reflection in a mirror, and in Neither More nor Less (Plate 41,
Ni mas ni menos) (Figure 5.2) an artist represented as a monkey attempts to create a physical likeness of
an aristocrat depicted as a wigwearing donkey. These 1799 prints show how, at the turn of the century,
artists were preoccupied with the morally questionable practice of conjuring or being seduced by
appearances. Perspicuity or clearsightedness found a stylistic analogue in the morally elevated,
“virile,” linear clarity and spatial logic of David’s neoclassical style. They were seen increasingly as an
essential requisite of moral viewing (Crow, 1985, 221; Craske, 1997, 230).