'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)

'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

In one of the most striking prints from the series, five men wearing helmets in the shape of a bird’s head fly aided by wings strapped to their wrists and feet. The image has been interpreted as a metaphor of the latest political and philosophical currents, which were opposed by the most conservative sectors of Spanish society. Goya’s image can also be associated with late eighteenth-century spectacles featuring aerostatic balloons and parachute descents that were still popular in Madrid in the 1810s. The contraption worn by his figures also recalls a "new machine for flying" invented about 1808 by the Austrian clockmaker Jacques Degen and described in an 1809 periodical. From the posthumous first edition published by the Academia de San Fernando in Madrid in 1864 under the title 'Los Proverbios'.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)'A Way of Flying' from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)

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.