Spanish Entertainment from the 'Bulls of Bordeaux'

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Goya’s Bulls series reflects the profound transformation in bullfighting in the early nineteenth century. While his 1816 Tauromaquia synthesized the evolution of bullfighting from its origins until about 1800, this series was a tragicomic response to the spectacle’s decline in quality. The frequent staging of comic and amateur corridas in the same sessions as serious, professional bullfights compromised the gravity of Spain’s proud tradition. Made for French audiences, Spanish Entertainment hints at a Romantic identification of bullfighting with Spain. Yet, as the work of an artist living in semi-exile because of the political situation at home, it may also reflect his disillusionment with the masses, presented here as an irrational crowd.

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