Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)

Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this scene, Goya laid bare the harmful consequences of treatments by quack doctors, exemplified by the richly dressed man whose hand is in the mouth of a grimacing patient; in the foreground, another man vomits, and a third patient sits, possibly also retching. Goya based the print on the drawing (35.103.10) but simplified the final composition. The scene could have been inspired by an experiment by a royal physician, Francisco Javier de Balmis, that used medicinal plants to treat venereal diseases and induced violent vomiting. That controversy, widely publicized in the Madrid press, could explain the symptoms shown here.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)Plate 33 from "Los Caprichos": To the Count Palatine (Al Conde Palatino)

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.