Plate 64 from "Los Caprichos": Bon voyage (Buen Viage)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A group of witches and demons flies through the night sky on the batlike wings of a monstrous creature. These hideous figures have been interpreted as the embodiment of vices let loose, under the cover of darkness, in the domain of ignorance. The blurring of the creatures that emerge from or disappear into the velvety layers of aquatint of the background lends the scene a nightmarish quality.

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