News: Goya at the Frick

The Frick’s newest exhibition opened earlier this month and explores Spanish drawings from the early 17th to early 19th century through the work of such famed artists as Ribera and Francisco Goya. The show entitled “The Spanish Manner: Drawings From Ribera to Goya” will be up until January 9th and contains over 50 drawings focusing on Spain’s “inventive and unique graphic tradition during this period.”
 

One striking example is “David and Goliath,” a chalk drawing by the great 17th century painter Jusepe de Ribera. It’s all delicacy and refinement — until you notice that the stone David has flung is still lodged in the giant’s forehead.
 
If you think that drawing is a bit disturbing, consider Ribera’s “Head of a Man With Little Figures on His Head.” In this startling image, a man with large, crude features is shown in profile, seemingly unaware that four athletic little men are scampering buck naked across his cone-shaped hat.
 
Another work, “An Auto-da-fe” by Sebastian de Herrera Barnuevo, is the only known 17th-century drawing of the public ceremony that marked the end of some mass trials under the Spanish Inquisition. Convicts in penitents’ robes stand on a scaffold before a tribunal, waiting to be sentenced.

 
The exhibition features one entire gallery devoted to Goya, who many consider to be the last of the old masters as well as the first of the modern painters. The gallery features mainly Goya’s works from a series of eight albums of drawings he made between the 1790s and his death in 1828.
 
The Frick
1 E 70th St, New York, NY 10021-4994 – (212) 288-0700

View Larger Map