Revenge on Constable Lampiños; page 86 from the "Images of Spain" Album (F)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The story of revenge depicted here might have been inspired by an episode that occurred in Goya’s hometown of Zaragoza in the mid-eighteenth century, which the artist could have learned about as a child. The composition, organized around a melee of bodies and faces seen from an unusual viewpoint, enhances the main narrative: it emphasizes the singular act of a woman injecting a lethal substance into the victim’s anus while her companions restrain him. Goya left blank the upper part of the sheet so he could include a lengthy explanation, uncommon to drawings from this album.

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