Gaspar de Guzmán, Count Duke of Olivares on horseback, after Velázquez

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is one of a number of etchings Goya made after paintings by the esteemed Spanish artist Diego Velázquez that were in the royal collection in Madrid. Velázquez’s painting of Count-Duke of Olivares—King Philip IV’s prime minister—dates to about 1636. It shows the count astride a rearing stallion, raising a baton and looking directly at the viewer before commanding a battle. In his etching, Goya diminished the battle; the horses and soldiers are fewer and harder to make out. By reducing much of the foreground to areas of light and dark and leaving parts of the background unetched, Goya emphasized the count’s powerful figure.

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