Plate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnous

Plate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnous

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A number of advances in Spanish bullfighting were thought to have been invented by Muslim settlers (known as Moors) in the Middle Ages, when this scene is set. It records a practice by which Moorish bullfighters called the bulls by using a burnoose (hooded cloak), a forerunner of the matador’s cape. Goya built this scene with great visual economy. Pace and tone emphasize the action and enliven otherwise uniform backgrounds. Even relatively simple compositions like this reveal Goya’s artistic intuition in brilliant details, such as the arrogant demeanor of the bullfighters or the bull’s tail, which resembles the burning fuse of a firework about to be propelled against its human opponents.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnousPlate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnousPlate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnousPlate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnousPlate 6 from "La Tauromaquia": The Moors make a different play in the ring calling the bull with their burnous

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.