Sancho Panza Drinking with the Pilgrims and Ricote

A group of seated figures can be seen in the shade of some trees. Sancho is drinking from a wineskin, and in the background on the right, Rocinante is drinking from a stream.

This is a preparatory drawing for the engraving that illustrated Gabriel de Sancha’s edition of Don Quixote (1797–8). The two Quixotes from Sancha’s workshop are dignified successors to a publishing tradition of exceptional quality and bear witness to the new impetus that the printing industry had achieved in the country. The editions actually have additional charm, as the printer relied on some of the most prominent artists of the time. Agustín Navarro did most of the work, although he left Don Quixote unfinished. To conclude the work, Gabriel de Sancha hired new artists, namely José Camarón and Luis Paret y Alcázar.

Although they maintain the spirit of the previous images, their drawings show subtle but important differences. Moreover, these compositions also differed from the model of Don Quixote published by Joaquín de Ibarra in 1780. In search of new themes, they replaced the tumultuous scenes with calmer ones and, in doing so, offered greater possibilities for showing details of everyday life, as exemplified by this delightful sketch kept in the Museo del Prado. In this drawing, Camarón shows Sancho in the shade of the trees, drinking happily with his neighbour Ricote. The scene depicting the episode of Sancho and the Moorish Ricote (Part II, Ch. 54), appears in the fifth volume between pages 174–5, with the indication ‘P. Camarón del P. Duflos Sculp’ and faithfully repeats, inverted, the composition of this drawing.

Imágenes del Quijote: modelos de representación en las ediciones de los siglos XVII a XIX / Patrick Lenaghan en colaboración con Javier Blas y José Manuel Matilla, Madrid, The Hispanic Society of America, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2003, p.248-249; 254