Plate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at Zaragoza

Plate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at Zaragoza

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This print shows the heart-stopping antics of Martincho (Antonio Ebassun), a bullfighter active in the second half of the eighteenth century. Goya devoted four Tauromaquia plates and one unpublished print to this otherwise obscure matador. Here, he sits on a chair with his feet shackled, confronting the charging animal. The matador’s sword is echoed visually by the strip of burnished aquatint that follows a roughly horizontal path and demarcates two tonal sections. The mass of dark shading below—narrowing like an arrow as it nears the bull—intensifies the focus on man and beast, underscoring the power of the thrust, and prefigures their ultimately deadly clash.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at ZaragozaPlate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at ZaragozaPlate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at ZaragozaPlate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at ZaragozaPlate 18 of "La 'Tauromaquia": The daring of Martincho in the ring at Zaragoza

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.