One person’s art work that I didn’t expect to see at the Metropolitan was Francisco de Goya’s. Goya was a Spanish romantic painter and is considered the last of the Old Masters and the first of the new ones. I have admired Goya’s pieces ever sense I came across some in my Art History book in school. He is very imaginative but dark at the same time. His works started to become much more dark, imaginative, and just plain insane towards the end of his life. He eventually went insane and covered his house in these dark paintings which no one knew about except for him at the time.
One painting that I didn’t know was his before I went to the Met is called “Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuñiga”. This piece was commissioned by the Altimiras, a royal family in Spain. In the painting it shows a boy dressed in red and white from head to toe playing with a pet magpie. In the background you can see three alley cats and a birdcage with a bird inside it as well. The bird could represent innocence, Goya may have been trying to show the sometimes frail line between innocence and the forces of darkness and evil. Goya often dabbled in dark subject matter so this painting is believed to have been started after the boy died. This painting is one of my favorites by Goya because it has a good backstory to it as well as an eerie quality to it as well. My grandmother actually got a reproduction of this painting for me a long time ago before I even knew who Francisco de Goya was. It definitely speaks volumes to me as well as many other people who have seen it in person.
