As part of our remit to bring the Banco de España Collection to the public in an educational, approachable way, this website includes a number of thematic itineraries. These are intended to work as virtual exhibitions in which external authors are invited to present their own readings of specific aspects of the collection.

The three itineraries already posted on the Banco de España portal –Face to Face with History, Slow Presence and Notions of Fashion- are now joined by a fourth, devoted to the bank's treasured prints by Francisco de Goya: Disasters of War, Bullfighting and the four Follies published by the magazine L’Art.

^{Sad Forebodings of What is to Happen and Nothing. The Event Will Tell, prints from the Disasters of War series by Goya}

This latest itinerary has been drawn up by José Manuel Matilla, Head of Conservation of Drawings and Prints at the Museo Nacional del Prado (Prado Museum), who has selected a total of 25 prints from these series. He explains that they depict dramatic scenes governed by irrationality, fear, violence, death and desperation, and underscore just how relevant Goya's work remains today: he was very much of his time, but was capable of expressing universal ideas which have always been present in human beings.

Matilla also believes that Goya also had the rare ability to break through the limits set by the culture and society of his time without being marginalised for doing so. Throughout his career Goya combined "official" commissions, executed within the confines of the conventional circuit, with work in which he gave free rein to his personal creativity and showed his own, critical vision of the world. Matilla argues that he can thus be considered as the first modern reference point for artists who not only accept commissions but also create on a different level as prolifically as in their official work or even more so.

^{Origin of the Harpoons or Banderillas and Lightness and Daring of Juanito Apiñani in Madrid's [plaza], prints from the Bullfighting Series by Goya}

To some extent it was the vital need to give voice to his own thoughts that led him to move into etching to a greater extent than any Spanish artist before him. And he did so in a way that was so advanced for his time that it took many years for people to realise just how enormously important these works were. As Matilla points out, Goya used etchings, from which multiple prints could be made for public distribution, to express his personal impulses, reflect his own independent viewpoint and experiment with form and concepts.

Matilla therefore believes that by extending its collection of works by Goya with the acquisition of these three series of prints the bank has put itself in a position to provide a much more comprehensive reading of his work. The prints show that although he was linked to those in power he was also an artist with a highly critical, uncompromising view of the times in which he lived.

^{Animal Folly / Other Laws for the People and Sure Folly / A Circus Queen, prints from the Follies series by Goya}