Escape to New York - IV

I think that this is my favorite view inside the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  This gallery is called the Carroll and Milton Petrie European Sculpture Court.  When you enter the Met from the Fifth Avenue entrance, you go up the grand stairway, and turn left at the top of the stairs and head over toward some of the main galleries.  On the way, you pass several windows that look down on this scene.  I love the contrast between the white marble statues, and the dark silhouettes of the visitors

So the main exhibit we wanted to see was "Goya's Graphic Imagination" which filled three galleries with etchings and "brush and brown ink wash on laid paper."  The artworks were amazing!  What was really astounding was the incredibly fine detail in the etchings!  It was beyond imagining!  What made the exhibit exhausting, actually was the number of artworks, AND the text that you need to read in order to understand what the work was about.  The above etching is called "Thou who canst not." AND it is a CROPPED version of the whole art work.  What could this be about?  Two men with donkeys on their backs?  Here is some of the text provided by the curator:

"The print has been interpreted as a satire on the uselessness of the nobility and the clergy, whose upkeep had become a financial burden for the impoverished working population. In other prints from the series, the ass appears as a device to ridicule ignorance in professions such as medicine, education, and the law."  So you really did have to read all the text in order to understand the art.  Whew!  PLEASE be sure to click on the image to see all the fine detail