Photographing the Unseen Mexico: Maya Goded’s Socially Engaged Documentaries.

his limited spare time. The four main contributors have gathered the latest research and dispelled long-held assumptions and misreadings about the life of the artist. Jesusa Vega debunks the desire to see Goya and the Duchess of Alba as lovers, pointing out that the relationship was familial rather than romantic; McDonald gives us a new approach to the artist’s sketching techniques; while Chaparro and Cer on-Pe~ na, who have already published work addressing obscurities of the artist’s early life, show their expertise here in entries on individual pieces and remain questioning and open-minded, bringing out unresolved ambiguities in the narratives of each image. The late aquatint, Seated Giant, one of the most innovative designs Goya ever produced (item 48, 164) is related through technique and inspiration to Goya’s painting El Coloso (fig. 45, 164) which Professor Vega accepts as an authentic work, without any qualifiers (59). The painting, which is now attributed to Goya on the Prado label, having been previously thought to be the work of a pupil, is connected to the analysis of the print and here the writers only refer in a cursory way to the disagreement which has marred its authenticity. A slightly more tentative assessment appears in the catalogue entry which notes: “Goya’s authorship of that painting has been called into question [... ]. This view has been vigorously challenged and there is growing support for the painting to be returned to Goya” (164). Despite the vociferous clamor of the for-and-against arguments, as Goya writes tellingly on a drawing of a single figure standing in a desolate landscape and waving his arms: “No har as nada con clamar” (item 78, 232). Scrolling through Amazon lists of the many Goya biographies on sale, it is not unusual to find readers lamenting the sparse attention art historians of the past have paid to prints and drawings in their analyses of Goya’s career. Goya’s “recognition derives mainly from his accomplishments as a painter” (13), but the balance of his posthumous fame is tipping in favour of the new ascendancy of his long commitment to graphic design. There have in recent years been several important exhibitions of Goya’s works on paper, but this show and its accompanying catalogue give us a much clearer insight into the complexities of Goya’s life-long passion for graphic media.