Seated Giant
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Executed entirely in aquatint, this is one of Goya’s most technically ambitious yet enigmatic prints. A giant dominating a desolate landscape is captured in a moment of transition. He turns his head toward us as if roused from deep thought, slumber, or despondency. Perhaps he had been awaiting the dawning of a new day and turns because that moment has come. Goya used aquatint to achieve subtle effects of light and dark—an apt technique for depicting a crepuscular atmosphere and conveying the sense of unease that pervades the composition. It is not known exactly when Goya made this print. It has been dated from around 1800 or ‘by 1818'. There is a close relationship between the print and the famous painting of the Colossus in the Museo del Prado, a painting thought to relate to the Peninsular War, symbolizing either a rampaging tyrant or a protector against enemy invaders. In the print, positioned above the desolation, the giant might embody sorrow in war’s aftermath, the bleak landscape symbolizing brutal conflict and the lower white strip suggesting obliteration. The painting has long been attributed to Goya, but in 2008 the Prado Museum designated it as a studio work and not by the master himself. There is no consensus, and disagreement continues, but there is growing support for it to be returned to Goya. The print is critical in the debate about the authorship of the painting. If the painting is a studio work then the artist borrowed the figure of Colossus from Goya’s print. Given his imagination and originality, it seems highly unlikely that Goya would borrow the figure from someone else’s painting to use as the basis for his print. (Mark McDonald)
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.