Plate 8 from "Los Caprichos": They carried her off! (Que se la llevaron!)
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
The woman has sometimes been interpreted as a victim of rape, an antecedent to similar violations depicted in The Disasters of War. Her head is thrown back and she might be crying out. The scene is complicated by the fact that the woman appears to be embracing one of the men carrying her, an ambiguity typical of Goya’s work. Both figures are cloaked in the manner of monks. Are they perpetrators of the crime? The nocturnal setting and the brilliant unetched parts of the sheet heighten the drama.
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.