A partly naked woman seated by a stream; page 32 from the "Images of Spain" Album (F)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The challenge of discerning the meaning of certain Goya works is exemplified by this drawing. The image’s correspondence with the biblical story of Susanna and the Elders, in which two old men spied upon a woman bathing, has long been noted. It has also been suggested that the drawing shows an illicit encounter between two lovers in the woods outside Madrid. More recently it was hypothesized that it represents summer. These interpretations are not without problems. It is more likely that Goya was experimenting with the fundamentals of a story like Susanna and the Elders, resulting in an image without a precise subject.

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