Spanish encounter

Renaissance to Goya: Prints and Drawings from Spain opens well with a superb drawing by Zurbarán, ‘Head of a Monk’, and a Goya lithograph, ‘The Bulls of Bordeaux’. After that, turn left into the main print room and the disappointment starts. Have you ever wondered why we are not familiar with more Spanish artists than the few great names?

On the evidence of this exhibition the answer is clear. The lesser names are simply not very good, so it is a relief to find the Italian Federico Zuccaro, a working visitor to Spain, among the likes of Vicente Carducho and Miguel Barrosso. However important a historical survey, this show only intermittently comes alive. In a corner, there’s a Velázquez of two horses — one of the very few drawings by him in existence — and lots of oddities are scattered about, such as Francisco Rizi’s black chalk drawing of the dwarf Lusillo. But the sensitive should really try to avoid the awful things by Francisco Herrera the Younger.

The exhibition suddenly changes gear with a run of Murillo images: from ‘St Anthony of Padua and the Miracle of the Irascible Son’, one of his earliest drawings, and St Isidore of Seville, slightly sweet in tone, to the more martial Archangel Michael. Quality dips again until we encounter Ribera, represented by several good things including two exquisite chalk drawings. Then Goya finally comes to the rescue. The comparison offered by an ink drawing and etching of ‘The Garrotted Man’ alone makes the show worth visiting, but there’s more. In fact, lots more Goyas — be careful not to miss the whole section to the right of the vestibule behind Michelangelo’s great ‘Epifania’ cartoon. Here is a matchless array of Goya prints and drawings, including a red chalk portrait of Wellington, a witty Don Quixote beset by monsters, and a chalk study of lunatics.