The Childhood of Sebastián Gómez

The Childhood of Sebastián Gómez

Auguste Hadamard

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print illustrates a chapter in Eugénie Foa's 1856 book on the childhoods of famous painters and musicians, a popular subject in the mid-nineteenth century. According to the narrative, upon discovering that his enslaved studio assistant, Sebastián Gómez, had skillfully executed and transformed paintings overnight, the Spanish seventeenth-century painter Murillo agrees to grant him whatever he most desires as recompense. As the caption indicates, Gómez asked for the freedom of his father, which Murillo conceded, along with that of the promising young artist himself. Recent scholarship suggests that while Gómez was apprenticed to Murillo, he was neither of African descent, nor enslaved; rather, it seems the biography of Juan de Pareja, the enslaved assistant whom Velázquez liberated, was grafted onto him.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Childhood of Sebastián GómezThe Childhood of Sebastián GómezThe Childhood of Sebastián GómezThe Childhood of Sebastián GómezThe Childhood of Sebastián Gómez

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.