Plate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other arms

Plate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other arms

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In his treatise on bullfighting published in 1807, José Vargas Ponce disparaged the old custom of releasing the bull to the masses when it was unable to continue the fight. He observed: "In ancient times Moorish slaves . . . with pitchforks or medias lunas [sickles with blades shaped like a half moon] used to cripple the bulls by cutting their nerves and, escape impossible, they were finished off by the crowd." The ritual seems to be the very moment captured in this plate, where the bull is surrounded by a mob and a figure at right is about to launch a firecracker-laden banderilla (barbed dart).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other armsPlate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other armsPlate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other armsPlate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other armsPlate 12 from "La Tauromaquia": The crowd hamstrings the bull with lances, sickles, banderillas and other arms

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.