The daring of Martincho in the ring at Saragossa, plate 18 from The Art of Bullfighting
1814/16, published 1816
Medium
Etching, burnished aquatint and drypoint on ivory laid paper
Dimensions
Image: 20.5 × 30.5 cm (8 1/8 × 12 1/16 in.); Plate: 24.9 × 35.5 cm (9 13/16 × 14 in.); Sheet: 32.1 × 44.5 cm (12 11/16 × 17 9/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
123726
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Francisco de Goya was an enthusiastic bullfighting aficionado and even claimed to have been a torero (bullfighter) in his younger years. Yet it is unlikely that he meant this print series to be seen only as a fan’s outline of the history of bullfighting in Spain. In the early 19th century, when Goya published these prints, bullfighting was a politically charged activity. It was seen either as bread and circus (or pan y toros [bread and bulls], as a reformist tract put it), meant to keep the popu...
About the Artist
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in the small Aragonese village of Fuendetodos, Spain, to José Benito de Goya, a master gilder, and Gracia de Lucientes. The fourth of six children in a modest lower-middle-class family, Goya received a basic education before beginning his artistic training at age 14 under the local painter José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza, where he sp...