Self-Portrait; wearing a top hat facing left within a drawn frame (recto); two studies of his face (verso)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In this preparatory drawing for the first print in the Caprichos (50.558.33), Goya wears the latest French fashions. Adopted by the emerging Spanish middle class in the 1790s, this style of dress served as a sign of both prosperous respectability and receptiveness to foreign influences. His expression suggests his critical stance toward the vices and errors he satirized in the images that followed in the Caprichos. The mannered way he represents himself—including the narrowed eyes and curved lips—also reflects his knowledge of popular and influential treatises on physiognomy and expression.

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