Renaissance To Goya: Prints And Drawings From Spain

Renaissance To Goya: Prints And Drawings From Spain

This exhibition, drawn from the British Museum collection, brings together for the first time important prints and drawings by Spanish and other European artists who were working in Spain from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth century. Through exhibiting these works, many of which have never before been on display, the exhibition will provide new insights into the visual culture and history of Spain, a country renowned for its painting and architecture, but not so well known for its graphic arts in comparison to its European counterparts, Italy and France.

Outside of Spain, the British Museum has one of the best collections of Spanish drawings from the seventeenth century, a period often considered to be the ‘Golden Age’ of Spanish arts and literature. All of the most important artists are represented by key works in this display; Diego Velázquez and Alonso Cano in Madrid, Bartolomé Murillo and Francisco Zurbáran in Seville and Jusepe de Ribera in Spanish Naples. Francisco de Goya, who is universally regarded as one of the most important and compelling graphic artists of the period, is represented through the Museum’s remarkable collection of his prints and drawings.