Goya’s ‘Duke of Osuna’ to go on display at Norton Simon Museum

The Norton Simon Museum will soon add a Goya to its collection, if only temporarily.

The Pasadena institution announced Wednesday that it will exhibit “Don Pedro, Duque de Osuna,” a large-scale portrait by the 18th-century master Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, for roughly three months beginning in December.

The 1790s portrait, on loan from the Frick Collection in New York through an exchange program, joins three other Goya paintings and one drawing in Norton Simon’s permanent collection.

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The painting depicts an influential figure of the Spanish Enlightenment, one of the artist’s most important patrons.

It is the first time it has been on loan to a West Coast institution, according to the museum. The Goya will be at the Norton Simon from Dec. 6 through March 3, 2014.

To mark the arrival of the additional Goya, the museum will present a companion exhibition, “Unflinching Vision: Goya’s Rare Prints,” featuring its rarely displayed etchings and lithographs by the artist, as well as lectures and other programming.

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“Goya was a favorite of Norton Simon, who amassed several paintings and more than 1,450 works on paper by the artist,” museum president Walter Timoshuk said in a statement.

The Goya’s visit is part of the same program with the Frick and the National Gallery that has brought “Small Cowper Madonna” by Raphael, Vermeer’s “A Lady Writing” and “Self Portrait 1889” by Van Gogh to the museum in recent years. The Norton Simon sends work from its collection to the other museums, most recently Van Gogh’s “Portrait of a Peasant” to the Frick last October.

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