A radiant female figure beset by dark spirits; page 45 from the 'Images of Spain' album (F)
ca. 1812–20
Medium
Brush and point of brush, brown and gray washes, over touches or chalk, on laid paper
Dimensions
Sheet: 8 1/16 × 5 9/16 in. (20.4 × 14.2 cm)
Classification
Drawings
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1935
Accession Number
35.103.30
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the turbulent years around 1812–20, amid Spain's Napoleonic upheavals, Francisco de Goya y Lucientes created this haunting drawing as page 45 in his private *Images of Spain* album (F). Titled *A Radiant Female Figure Beset by Dark Spirits*, it exemplifies Goya's late Romantic style, marked by psychological intensity and supernatural dread. No longer the court painter of vibrant portraits, Goya turned inward, filling albums with dreamlike visions that captured human vulnerability and the era's moral darkness. Rendered in brush and point-of-brush with brown and gray washes over subtle chalk...
About the Artist
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker considered the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Rising from modest provincial origins to become First Court Painter to Charles IV, Goya's career spanned the Enlightenment's optimism and the brutal Napoleonic invasion that shattered it. A mysterious illness in 1793 left him permanently deaf and ...