Plate 23 from "Los Caprichos": These specks of dust (Aquellos polbos)
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
This image of an auto-da-fé, a ceremony of judgment before execution, is a direct reference to the Inquisition. The accused wears a conical hat decorated with references to his or her crimes and a sleeveless scapular, a sign of penance, over a long garment. Goya’s caption is taken from the first part of a Spanish proverb that alludes to the magnitude of the consequences of apparently minor or unimportant events. The target of his satire is not the accused, who is represented as a defenseless victim, but the sinister figures in the pulpit—the Inquisitors responsible for public spectacles like this one.
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.