'Animal Folly' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The elephant is based on a drawing Goya made in the 1800s, possibly upon the arrival in Madrid of an Indian elephant. Conveying the wonder with which animals from other places were regarded in early nineteenth-century Spain, this print has been interpreted as a reference to the so-called Persian Manifesto (from a note on the customs of "the ancient Persians" in its first article) that led to the annulment of the constitution and the restoration of Ferdinand　VII in 1814. Here, men in Eastern robes hold an open book and a harness with bells, attempting to lure an elephant standing in a circular space that recalls a bullring. One of the four additonal plates prepared for the set but not included in the posthumous first edition published by the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid in 1864 under the title 'Los Proverbios'.

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