'Funereal Folly' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The meaning of this image remains elusive. It has been interpreted as the nightmare of the figure on the ground, whose being hovers spectrally above. Like other prints from the series, this one has been connected with phantasmagorias, popular spectacles that took place in Madrid in which frightening images of the supernatural were projected onto screens in a darkened theater. Goya’s use of aquatint to blur the outlines of his figures and to wrap clarifying details in shadows might be explained by his continued interest in the state of suspension between perception and imagination, which he earlier explored in the Caprichos. From the posthumous first edition published by the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid in 1864 under the title 'Los Proverbios'.

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