The Spanish Manner: Drawings from Ribera to Goya at the Frick
October 5, 2010, through January 9, 2011

Spanish draftsmen of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries created works of dazzling beauty and inventiveness. Though often well versed in the traditions of Italy and Flanders, artists on the Iberian Peninsula developed their own signature techniques and departed from academic conventions of representing the human figure. They explored a wide range of subject matter and motifs, from saints and biblical scenes infused with Counter-Reformation ideology to depictions of martyrdoms, torture, and otherworldly creatures. This original, visionary, and fantastic aspect is a defining hallmark of the “Spanish manner.”