Two complete sets of Goya’s 33 Tauromaquia (bullfighting) etchings, from the collection of Spain’s Calcografía Nacional, have gone on sale in an eBay shop recently opened by Madrid’s Royal Academy—the first time that a Spanish institution has used the website.
Printed in 1983 by the Calcografia Nacional, each set is worth around €32,000 (each etching is listed at €965); 150 sets were printed in dark umber ink and 50 in black. A third complete set in dark umber ink is on sale through the museum’s online store (€950 per print). A set of the first edition of Tauromaquia, published by Goya in 1816 in Madrid, sold at Sotheby’s London in April for £512,750.
When it opened this month, the Royal Academy’s eBay shop had around 500 pieces on sale, including 36 by Goya and 24 by Fortuny (father and son), priced between €95 and €2,050. The institution aims to list 2,000 works from the 18th century to the contemporary period.
Etchings of Goya’s Los Caprichos, generally considered his finest work, are also on sale on both the academy’s eBay shop and online store. The eBay shop lists etching 41 in the series, printed in 1970 by Calcografia Nacional, at €965 per print, although the number of copies available has not been disclosed. On 25 January, a Sotheby’s auction in New York sold an original Los Caprichos (80 plates, first edition, 1799) for $912,500.
