'Barbarous Entertainment', a blind guitarist on the horns of a bull

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Shortly after publishing the Caprichos in 1799, Goya made this independent print. It returns to the subject of the blind guitarist the artist had explored earlier an etching from around 1778 (see 22.63.29). The title Barbarous entertainment is taken from an inscription written by Goya on an impression of the print at the British Museum. It suggests his ambivalence toward the practice of bullfighting in Spain. The print might have been inspired by the comic bullfighter Ramón de la Rosa, whose antics were reported in a Madrid newspaper in 1797.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.

Metropolitan Museum of Art