Ridiculous Folly, from the 'Disparates' (Follies / Irrationalities)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Figures wrapped in cloaks and blankets sit on a tree branch, possibly at night, listening to a speech by an enigmatic figure wearing a striped mantle that conceals his face and body; only his hands are visible, emphasizing his oratorical gesture. The Spanish press often likened the nation to a tree (either thriving or diseased). Goya appears to have employed the same metaphor. The image recalls descriptions of a blight that turned olive trees black because of the "millions of insects" covering their branches and "sucking their nourishment." In the print, the tree is burdened not by parasites but by a vacant-looking audience whose passivity contributes to the country’s disease. 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

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