Goya's the Forge

New volume in the Frick Diptych series features an illuminating essay by Frick deputy director and Peter Jay Sharp Chief Curator Xavier F. Salomon paired with a text by award-winning author Hisham Matar. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746–1828) is among the most important Spanish artists of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. A late masterpiece, his Forge derives from the mythological theme of the forge of Vulcan, the metalworker of the Olympian gods. The figures in Goya’s monumental, haunting painting are instead muscular laborers at work around a blacksmith’s anvil. Salomon’s deeply researched text is complemented by a poetic piece by Matar. Designed to foster critical engagement and interest specialist and non-specialist alike, each book in the Frick Diptych series illuminates a single work in the Frick’s rich collection with an essay by a Frick curator paired with a contribution from a contemporary artist or writer.