![Prado - Los Desastres de la Guerra - No](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e2/Prado_-_Los_Desastres_de_la_Guerra_-_No._03_-_Lo_mismo.jpg)
''The Disasters of War'' ( es, Los desastres de la guerra) is a series of 82
[80 prints in the first published edition (1863), for which the last two plates were not available. See "]Execution
Capital punishment, also known as the death penalty, is the State (polity), state-sanctioned practice of deliberately killing a person as a punishment for an actual or supposed crime, usually following an authorized, rule-governed process to ...
". prints
In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...
created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and
printmaker
Printmaking is the process of creating work of art, artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand proce ...
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (; ; 30 March 174616 April 1828) was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker. He is considered the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His paintings, drawings, and ...
(1746–1828). Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates, art historians view them as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808
Dos de Mayo Uprising
On the 2 and 3 May 1808 the Dos de Mayo or Second of May Uprising of 1808 took place in Madrid, Spain. It was a rebellion by civilians alongside some military against the occupation of the city by French troops, provoking a heavy-hand repress ...
, the subsequent
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War (1807–1814) was the military conflict fought in the Iberian Peninsula by Spain, Portugal, and the United Kingdom against the invading and occupying forces of the First French Empire during the Napoleonic Wars. In Spain ...
of 1808–1814 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the
restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. During the conflicts between
Napoleon
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
's
French Empire and Spain, Goya retained his position as first
court painter
A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or princely family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Painters were the most common, but the cour ...
to the Spanish crown and continued to produce portraits of the Spanish and French rulers.
[Wilson-Bareau, 45] Although deeply affected by the war, he kept private his thoughts on the art he produced in response to the conflict and its aftermath.
[Sayre, 129]
He was in poor health and almost deaf when, at 62, he began work on the prints. They were not published until 1863, 35 years after his death. It is likely that only then was it considered politically safe to distribute a sequence of artworks criticising both the French and restored Bourbons.
[Jones, Jonathan.]
Look what we did
. ''The Guardian'', 31 March 2003. Retrieved 29 August 2009. In total over a thousand sets have been printed, though later ones are of lower quality, and most
print room
A print room is a room in an art gallery or museum where a collection of old master and modern prints, usually together with drawings, watercolours, and photographs, are held and viewed.
A further meaning is a room decorated by pasting prints ...
collections have at least some of the set.
The name by which the series is known today is not Goya's own. His handwritten title on an album of
proofs
Proof most often refers to:
* Proof (truth), argument or sufficient evidence for the truth of a proposition
* Alcohol proof, a measure of an alcoholic drink's strength
Proof may also refer to:
Mathematics and formal logic
* Formal proof, a co ...
given to a friend reads: ''Fatal Consequences of Spain's Bloody War with Bonaparte, and Other Emphatic Caprices'' (). Aside from the titles or captions given to each print, these are Goya's only known words on the series. With these works, he breaks from a number of painterly traditions. He rejects the bombastic heroics of most previous Spanish war art to show the effect of conflict on individuals. In addition he abandons colour in favour of a more direct truth he found in shadow and shade.
![Prado - Los Desastres de la Guerra - No](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Prado_-_Los_Desastres_de_la_Guerra_-_No._04_-_Las_mugeres_dan_valor.jpg)
The series was produced using a variety of
intaglio printmaking
Intaglio ( ; ) is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that m ...
techniques, mainly
etching
Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...
for the line work and
aquatint
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used h ...
for the tonal areas, but also
engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design onto a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a Burin (engraving), burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or Glass engraving, glass ...
and
drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio (printmaking), intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate (or "matrix") with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. In principle, the method is practically ident ...
. As with many other Goya prints, they are sometimes referred to as aquatints, but more often as etchings. The series is usually considered in three groups which broadly mirror the order of their creation. The first 47 focus on incidents from the war and show the consequences of the conflict on individual soldiers and civilians. The middle series (plates 48 to 64) record the effects of the famine that hit Madrid in 1811–12, before the city was liberated from the French. The final 17 reflect the bitter disappointment of liberals when the restored Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected the
Spanish Constitution of 1812
The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy ( es, link=no, Constitución Política de la Monarquía Española), also known as the Constitution of Cádiz ( es, link=no, Constitución de Cádiz) and as ''La Pepa'', was the first Constituti ...
and opposed both state and religious reform. Goya's scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the "prodigious flowering of rage".
[Connell, 175] The serial nature in which the plates unfold has led some to see the images as similar in nature to photography.
Historical background
Napoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
declared himself
First Consul
The Consulate (french: Le Consulat) was the top-level Government of France from the fall of the Directory in the coup of 18 Brumaire on 10 November 1799 until the start of the Napoleonic Empire on 18 May 1804. By extension, the term ''The Con ...
of the
French Republic
France (), officially the French Republic ( ), is a country primarily located in Western Europe. It also comprises of overseas regions and territories in the Americas and the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans. Its metropolitan area ...
on 18 February 1799, and was crowned Emperor in 1804. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, it was politically and strategically important to him. The reigning Spanish sovereign,
Charles IV, was internationally regarded as ineffectual,
[Connell, 145–146] and his position at the time was threatened by his pro-British heir,
Crown Prince Ferdinand. Napoleon took advantage of Charles's weak standing by suggesting the two nations conquer Portugal—the spoils to be divided equally between France, Spain and the Spanish Prime Minister,
Manuel de Godoy
Manuel Godoy y Álvarez de Faria, Prince of the Peace, 1st Duke of Alcudia, 1st Duke of Sueca, 1st Baron of Mascalbó (12 May 17674 October 1851) was First Secretary of State of Spain from 1792 to 1797 and from 1801 to 1808. He received many t ...
, who would take the title "Prince of the
Algarve
The Algarve (, , ; from ) is the southernmost NUTS II region of continental Portugal. It has an area of with 467,495 permanent inhabitants and incorporates 16 municipalities ( ''concelhos'' or ''municípios'' in Portuguese).
The region has it ...
". Seduced by the French offer, Godoy accepted, failing to detect the true motivations of either Napoleon or Ferdinand, who both intended to use the invasion as a ploy, to seize power in Spain.
Under the guise of reinforcing the Spanish armies, 25,000 French troops entered Spain unopposed in November 1807. Even when their intentions became clear the following February, the occupying forces faced little resistance besides isolated actions in disconnected areas.
In 1808,
a popular uprising—incited by Ferdinand's supporters—saw Godoy captured and left Charles with no choice but to
abdicate
Abdication is the act of formally relinquishing monarchical authority. Abdications have played various roles in the succession procedures of monarchies. While some cultures have viewed abdication as an extreme abandonment of duty, in other societ ...
; he did so on 19 March 1808, allowing his son to ascend the throne as Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand had been seeking French patronage, but Napoleon and his principal commander, Marshal
Joachim Murat
Joachim Murat ( , also , ; it, Gioacchino Murati; 25 March 1767 – 13 October 1815) was a French military commander and statesman who served during the French Revolutionary Wars and Napoleonic Wars. Under the French Empire he received the ...
, believed that Spain would benefit from rulers who were more progressive and competent than the
Bourbons
The House of Bourbon (, also ; ) is a European dynasty of French origin, a branch of the Capetian dynasty, the royal House of France. Bourbon kings first ruled France and Navarre in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Spanish ...
. They decided that Napoleon's brother,
Joseph Bonaparte
it, Giuseppe-Napoleone Buonaparte es, José Napoleón Bonaparte
, house = Bonaparte
, father = Carlo Buonaparte
, mother = Letizia Ramolino
, birth_date = 7 January 1768
, birth_place = Corte, Corsica, Republic of ...
, should be king.
[Licht, 109] Under a pretext of mediation, Napoleon summoned Charles and Ferdinand to
Bayonne
Bayonne (; eu, Baiona ; oc, label= Gascon, Baiona ; es, Bayona) is a city in Southwestern France near the Spanish border. It is a commune and one of two subprefectures in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine re ...
, France, where they were coerced into relinquishing their rights to the throne in favour of Joseph.
![Francisco Goya - Portrait of the Duke of Wellington](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/Francisco_Goya_-_Portrait_of_the_Duke_of_Wellington.jpg)
Like other Spanish liberals, Goya was left in a difficult position after the French invasion. He had supported the initial aims of the
French Revolution
The French Revolution ( ) was a period of radical political and societal change in France that began with the Estates General of 1789 and ended with the formation of the French Consulate in November 1799. Many of its ideas are considere ...
, and hoped its ideals would help liberate Spain from
feudalism
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structur ...
to become a secular, democratic political system. There were two conflicts being fought in Spain: the resistance against the French threat, and a domestic struggle between the ideals of liberal modernisation and the pre-political incumbent ruling class. The latter divide became more pronounced—and the differences far more entrenched—following the eventual withdrawal of the French.
[Shaw, 482]
Several of Goya's friends, including the poets
Juan Meléndez Valdés
Juan Meléndez Valdés (11 March 1754 – 24 May 1817) was a Spanish Spanish Enlightenment literature, neoclassical poet.
Biography
He was born at Ribera del Fresno, in what is now the province of Badajoz. Destined by his parents for the priest ...
and
Leandro Fernández de Moratín
Leandro Fernández de Moratín (; 10 March 1760 – 21 June 1828) was a Spanish dramatist, translator and neoclassical poet.
Biography
Moratín was born in Madrid the son of Nicolás Fernández de Moratín, a major literary reformer in Sp ...
, were overt : the supporters (or collaborators, in the view of many) of Joseph Bonaparte.
He maintained his position as court painter, for which an oath of loyalty to Joseph was necessary. However, Goya had an instinctive dislike of authority, and witnessed first-hand the subjugation of his countrymen by French troops.
[That Goya had first-hand knowledge of events depicted in ''The Disasters of War'' is implied by the title of the print ''I saw it''.] During these years he painted little aside from portraits of figures from all parties, including an allegorical painting of Joseph Bonaparte in 1810,
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
from 1812 to 1814, and French and Spanish generals.
[Both the Bonaparte allegory and Wellington's medals and orders required updating soon after to reflect the changing situation—Wilson-Bareau, 45, and, for Wellington, Neil MacLaren, revised Allan Braham, ''The Spanish School, National Gallery Catalogues''. National Gallery London, 1970. 16–20. ] Meanwhile, Goya was working on drawings that would form the basis for ''The Disasters of War''. He visited many battle sites around Madrid to witness the Spanish resistance. The final plates are testament to what he described as ""—the dismemberment of Spain.
Plates
Art historians broadly agree that ''The Disasters of War'' is divided into three thematic groupings—war, famine, and political and cultural allegories. This sequence broadly reflects the order in which the plates were created. Few of the plates or drawings are dated; instead, their chronology has been established by identifying specific incidents to which the plates refer,
[Hughes (2004), 273] and the different batches of plates used, which allow sequential groups to be divined. For the most part, Goya's numbering agrees with these other methods. However, there are several exceptions. For example,
plate 1 was among the last to be completed, after the end of the war.
In the early plates of the war grouping, Goya's sympathies appear to lie with the Spanish defenders. These images typically show patriots facing hulking, anonymous invaders who treat them with fierce cruelty. As the series progresses, the distinction between the Spanish and the imperialists becomes ambiguous. In other plates, it is difficult to tell to which camp the distorted and disfigured corpses belong. Some of the titles deliberately question the intentions of both sides; for example, ''Con razon ó sin ella'' can mean ''with or without reason'', ''rightly or wrongly'', or ''for something or for nothing''. Critic Philip Shaw notes that the ambiguity is still present in the final group of plates, saying there is no distinction between the "heroic defenders of the Fatherland and the barbaric supporters of the old regime".
There have been a variety of English translations offered for the plate titles. In many instances, the satirical and often sardonic ambiguity and play on Spanish proverbs found in Goya's carefully worded original titles is lost.
War
Plates 1 to 47 consist mainly of realistic depictions of the horrors of the war fought against the French. Most portray the aftermath of battle; they include mutilated torsos and limbs mounted on trees, like "fragments of marble sculpture".
Both French and Spanish troops tortured and mutilated captives; evidence of such acts is minutely detailed across a number of Goya's plates.
[Robinson, Maisah. "Review of Francisco Goya's Disasters of War". ]Associated Press
The Associated Press (AP) is an American non-profit news agency headquartered in New York City. Founded in 1846, it operates as a cooperative, unincorporated association. It produces news reports that are distributed to its members, U.S. newspa ...
, 2006. Retrieved 28 August 2009. Civilian death is also captured in detail. Spanish women were commonly victims of assault and rape. Civilians often followed armies to battle scenes. If their side won, women and children would search the battlefield for their husbands, fathers and sons. If they lost, they fled in fear of being raped or murdered. In
plate 9, ''No quieren'' (''They do not want to''), an elderly woman is shown wielding a knife in defence of a young woman who is being assaulted by a soldier.
![Prado - Los Desastres de la Guerra - No](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Prado_-_Los_Desastres_de_la_Guerra_-_No._01_-_Tristes_presentimientos_de_lo_que_ha_de_acontecer.jpg)
The group begins with ''
Tristes presentimientos de lo que ha de acontecer'' (''Gloomy presentiments of what must come to pass''), in which a man kneels in the darkness with outstretched arms. The following plates describe combat with the French, who—according to art critic Vivien Raynor—are depicted "rather like
Cossacks
The Cossacks , es, cosaco , et, Kasakad, cazacii , fi, Kasakat, cazacii , french: cosaques , hu, kozákok, cazacii , it, cosacchi , orv, коза́ки, pl, Kozacy , pt, cossacos , ro, cazaci , russian: казаки́ or ...
, bayoneting civilians", while Spanish civilians are shown "poleaxing the French."
[Raynor, Vivien.]
Goya's 'Disasters of War': Grisly Indictment of Humanity
. ''New York Times'', 25 February 1990. Retrieved 29 August 2009. Plates 31 to 39 focus on atrocities and were produced on the same batch of plates as the famine group. Others are based on drawings Goya had completed in his ''Sketchbook-journal'', in studies where he examined the theme of the grotesque body in relation to the iconography of the tortured or martyred one. In his India ink wash drawing ''We cannot look at this'' (1814–24), he examined the idea of a humiliated inverted body with pathos and tragedy, as he did to comical effect in ''
The Straw Mannequin'' (1791–92).
[Stoichita and Coderch, 88–89]
Unlike most earlier Spanish art, Goya's rejects the ideals of heroic dignity. He refuses to focus on individual participants; though he drew from many classic art sources, his works pointedly portray the protagonists as anonymous casualties, rather than known patriots. The exception is
plate 7, ''Que valor!'' (''What courage!''), which depicts
Agustina de Aragón
Agustina Raimunda Maria Saragossa i Domènech or Agustina of Aragón (March 4, 1786 – May 29, 1857) was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Peninsular War, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Arm ...
(1786–1857), the heroine of
Zaragoza
Zaragoza, also known in English as Saragossa,''Encyclopædia Britannica'"Zaragoza (conventional Saragossa)" is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain. It lies by the Ebro river and its tributari ...
, who brought food to the
cannon
A cannon is a large- caliber gun classified as a type of artillery, which usually launches a projectile using explosive chemical propellant. Gunpowder ("black powder") was the primary propellant before the invention of smokeless powder ...
eers at the city defensive walls during the siege in which 54,000 Spaniards died. When all the cannoneers had been killed, Agustina manned and fired the cannons herself.
[Connell, 162] Although it is agreed that Goya could not have witnessed this incident, Robert Hughes believes it may have been his visit to Zaragoza in the lull between the
first
First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1).
First or 1st may also refer to:
*World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement
Arts and media Music
* 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
and
second
The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...
phases of the siege that inspired him to produce the series.
Famine
The second group, plates 48 to 64, detail the effects of the famine which ravaged Madrid from August 1811 until after
Wellington
Wellington ( mi, Te Whanganui-a-Tara or ) is the capital city of New Zealand. It is located at the south-western tip of the North Island, between Cook Strait and the Remutaka Range. Wellington is the second-largest city in New Zealand by me ...
's armies liberated the city in August 1812. Starvation killed 20,000 people in the city that year. In these plates, Goya's focus is directed away from the generalised scenes of slaughter of anonymous, unaligned people in unnamed regions of Spain; he turns towards a specific horror unfolding in Madrid. The famine was a result of many factors. For example, French invaders and Spanish guerrillas and bandits blocked paths and roads into the city, hampering the provision of food.
Goya does not focus on the reasons for the shortage, nor does he apportion blame to any one party. Instead, he is concerned only with its effect on the population.
[Hughes (2004), 297] Although the images in the group were based on the experience of Madrid, none of the scenes depict specific events, and there are no identifiable buildings to place the scenes. Goya's focus is on the darkened masses of dead and barely alive bodies, men carrying corpses of women, and bereaved children mourning for lost parents. Hughes believes
plate 50, ''Madre infeliz!'' (''Unhappy mother!''), to be the most powerful and poignant of the group. He suggests that the space between the small girl sobbing and the corpse of her mother represents "a darkness that seems to be the very essence of loss and orphanhood".
[Hughes (2004), 299] This group of plates was probably completed by early 1814. A scarcity of materials during the famine may have accounted for the freer application of
aquatint
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching that produces areas of tone rather than lines. For this reason it has mostly been used in conjunction with etching, to give both lines and shaded tone. It has also been used h ...
in these prints; Goya was sometimes forced to use defective plates or reuse old plates after they were
burnished.
Bourbons and clergy
Plates 65 to 82 were named "caprichos enfáticos" ("emphatic
caprices") in the original series title.
["Caprichos enfáticos" is difficult to translate; in the 18th century language of ]rhetoric
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
, "emphatic" suggests that these prints "make a point or give a warning by insinuation rather than by direct statement"—Wilson-Bareau, 59, quoting from an undisclosed source. Wilson-Bareau adds that "enfáticos" is also often translated as "striking". In talking about art, "Caprice", usually found today as the original Italian capriccio, normally suggests light-hearted fantasy, which does not characterise these prints or ''Los Caprichos
''Los caprichos'' (''The Caprices)'' is a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching created by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1797–1798, and published as an album in 1799. The prints were an artistic experiment: a medium for Goya's condem ...
'' Completed between 1813 and 1820 and spanning Ferdinand VII's fall and return to power, they consist of allegorical scenes that critique post-war Spanish politics, including the
Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
and the then-common judicial practice of torture. Although peace was welcomed, it produced a political environment that was in ways more repressive than before. The new regime stifled the hopes of liberals such as Goya, who used the term "fatal consequences" to describe the situation in his title for the series.
[
Cannizzo, Stephanie.]
Goya: The Disasters of War
". Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive
The Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA, formerly abbreviated as BAM/PFA) are a combined art museum, repertory movie theater, and archive associated with the University of California, Berkeley. Lawrence Rinder was Director from ...
, 2007. Retrieved 28 August 2009.
Hughes refers to the group as the "disasters of peace".
After the six years of
absolutism that followed Ferdinand's return to the throne on 1 January 1820,
Rafael del Riego
Rafael del Riego y Flórez (7 April 1784 – 7 November 1823) was a Spanish general and liberal politician, who played a key role in the outbreak of the Liberal Triennium (''Trienio liberal'' in Spanish).
Early life
Riego was born on 7 April ...
initiated an army revolt with the intent of restoring the
1812 Constitution. By March, the king was forced to agree, but by September 1823, after
an unstable period, a
French invasion supported by
an alliance of the major powers had removed the constitutional government. The last prints were probably not completed until after the Constitution was restored, though certainly before Goya left Spain in May 1824. Their balance of optimism and cynicism makes it difficult to relate them directly to particular moments in these rapidly moving events.
Many of these images return to the savage burlesque style seen in Goya's earlier ''
Caprichos
''Los caprichos'' (''The Caprices)'' is a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching created by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1797–1798, and published as an album in 1799. The prints were an artistic experiment: a medium for Goya's condem ...
''.
Plate 75 ''Farándula de charlatanes'' (''Troupe of charlatans'') shows a priest with a parrot's head performing before an audience of donkeys and monkeys.
In
plate 77, a pope walking a tightrope was "prudently reduced" to a cardinal or bishop in the print published in 1863.
[Wilson-Bareau, 59] Some prints showing animal scenes seem to draw from a satirical verse fable by
Giovanni Battista Casti
Giovanni Battista Casti (29 August 1724 – 5 February 1803) was an Italian poet, satirist, and author of comic opera librettos.
Life
He was born in Acquapendente. He entered the priesthood after studying at the seminary of Montefiascone and becam ...
, published in Italian in 1802; the ''
Animal Farm
''Animal Farm'' is a beast fable, in the form of satirical allegorical novella, by George Orwell, first published in England on 17 August 1945. It tells the story of a group of farm animals who rebel against their human farmer, hoping to crea ...
'' of its day. In plate 74, the wolf, representing a minister, quotes from the fable—"Miserable humanity, the fault is thine"—and signs with Casti's name. The print "lays the blame for their rulers' barbarity on the victims' own acceptance of it".
![Prado - Los Desastres de la Guerra - No](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Prado_-_Los_Desastres_de_la_Guerra_-_No._67_-_Esta_no_lo_es_menos.jpg)
A number of plates in this group reveal a scepticism towards
idolatry
Idolatry is the worship of a cult image or "idol" as though it were God. In Abrahamic religions (namely Judaism, Samaritanism, Christianity, the Baháʼí Faith, and Islam) idolatry connotes the worship of something or someone other than the A ...
of religious images. There are instances in the group where early Christian iconography, in particular statues and
procession
A procession is an organized body of people walking in a formal or ceremonial manner.
History
Processions have in all peoples and at all times been a natural form of public celebration, as forming an orderly and impressive ceremony. Religious ...
al images, are mocked and denigrated.
Plate 67, ''Esta no lo es menos'' (''This is no less curious''), shows two statues carried by two stooped members of clergy. One statue is recognisable as the "Virgin of Solitude". In Goya's image, the statue is not carried vertically in processional triumph, rather it lies flat and undignified on the backs of the two almost crouched men. Shown horizontal, the object loses its aura, and becomes a mere everyday object. Art critics Victor Stoichita and Anna Maria Coderch wrote, "It is in effect a deposed, toppled image, stripped of its powers and its connotations." Goya is making a general statement: that the Church's attempts to support and restore the Bourbons were "illusory, since what they proposed was nothing more than the adoration of an empty form".
[Stoichita and Coderch, 90–92]
The published edition of ''The Disasters of War'' ends as it begins; with the portrayal of a single, agonized figure. The last two plates show a woman wearing a
wreath
A wreath () is an assortment of flowers, leaves, fruits, twigs, or various materials that is constructed to form a circle .
In English-speaking countries, wreaths are used typically as household ornaments, most commonly as an Advent and Chri ...
, intended as a personification of
Spain
, image_flag = Bandera de España.svg
, image_coat = Escudo de España (mazonado).svg
, national_motto = ''Plus ultra'' (Latin)(English: "Further Beyond")
, national_anthem = (English: "Royal March")
, i ...
, Truth, or the
Constitution of 1812
The Political Constitution of the Spanish Monarchy ( es, link=no, Constitución Política de la Monarquía Española), also known as the Constitution of Cádiz ( es, link=no, Constitución de Cádiz) and as ''La Pepa'', was the first Constituti ...
—which Ferdinand had rejected in 1814.
[ In plate 79, ''Murió la Verdad'' (''The Truth has died''), she lies dead. In plate 80, ''Si resucitará?'' (''Will she live again?''), she is shown lying on her back with breasts exposed, bathed in a halo of light before a mob of "monks and monsters".] In plate 82, ''Esto es lo verdadero'' (''This is the true way''), she is again bare-breasted and apparently represents peace and plenty. Here, she lies in front of a peasant.[Of the last two prints, Licht writes, " oya'sotherwise authoritative hand begins to hesitate, and he creates the two weakest plates in the entire series. Therein, perhaps, lies ''his'' strength: He cannot delude himself." Licht, 158]
Execution
Many of Goya's preparatory drawings, mostly in red chalk, have survived and are numbered differently from the published prints. He produced two albums of proofs—among many individual proof impressions—of which only one is complete.[The most important collection of individual proofs was acquired in Spain by ]Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet
Sir William Stirling-Maxwell, 9th Baronet MP KT, of Pollok FRSE DCL LLD (8 March 181815 January 1878), was a Scottish historical writer, art historian and politician.
Until 1865 he was known as William Stirling, and several of his books were ...
from Valentín Carderera, who probably got them from Goya's grandson. In 1951, they were sold to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts
The Museum of Fine Arts (often abbreviated as MFA Boston or MFA) is an art museum in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the 20th-largest art museum in the world, measured by public gallery area. It contains 8,161 paintings and more than 450,000 works ...
. Wilson-Bareau, 99. This collection includes a unique unfinished and unpublished print from the first group: ''Infame provecho (Vile Advantage)'', Boston MFA Accession number: 51.1697 The full album consists of 85 works, including three small '' Prisioneros'' ("Prisoners") made in 1811 which are not part of the series. Goya gave the copy of the full album, now in the British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, to his friend Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez
Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez (17 September 1749 in Gijón3 December 1829 in Madrid) was a Spanish writer on art.
Biography
Bermúdez was born in Gijón, Asturias. He founded an art academy at Seville, and was given responsibility to order the Ar ...
. It contains a title-page inscription in Goya's hand, is signed at the page edges, and has numbers and titles to the prints written by Goya. These were copied on the plates when the published edition was prepared in 1863. By then, 80 had passed from Goya's son, Javier—who had stored them in Madrid after his father left Spain—to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acad ...
(Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando), of which Goya had been director. Comparison of the Ceán proof set and the engraved captions reveal changes to the inscriptions in factors such as spelling, punctuation and phrasing. These modifications sometimes affected the accompanying scene's meaning or impact, such as in Plate 36: in all printed editions, the title is given as 'Tampoco' ('Not in this case either'), while in the proof series it is written as 'Tan poco' ('So little'). Numbers 81 and 82 of the series rejoined the others in the Academy in 1870, and were not published until 1957. Goya's title for the series in the Ceán album, was ''Fatal consequences of the bloody war in Spain with Bonaparte''. Its subsequent shortening to ''Los Desastres de la Guerra'' was presumably an allusion to Jacques Callot's series ''Les misères de la Guerre''.
As the series progressed, Goya evidently began to experience shortages of good quality paper and copper plates, and was forced to take what art historian Juliet Wilson-Bareau
Juliet Capulet () is the female protagonist in William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy '' Romeo and Juliet''. A 13-year-old girl, Juliet is the only daughter of the patriarch of the House of Capulet. She falls in love with the male protagonist ...
calls the "drastic step" of destroying two etched and aquatinted landscapes, likely from the first years of the century, from which very few impressions had been printed. These were cut in half to produce four of ''The Disasters of War''s prints.[Wilson-Bareau, 50] Partly because of the material shortages, the sizes and shapes of the plates vary somewhat, ranging from as small as 142 × 168 mm (5.6 × 6.6 in) to as large as 163 × 260 mm (6.4 × 10.2 in).[Plates 14 and 24, respectively. See the Spanish National Library website for measurements.]
Goya completed 56 plates during the war against France, and these are often viewed as eye-witness accounts. A final batch—including plate 1, several in the middle of the series, and the last 17 plates—are likely to have been produced after the end of the war, when materials were more abundant. The titles of some plates, written beneath each, indicate his presence: ''I saw this'' ( plate 44) and ''One can not look'' ( plate 26). While it is unclear how much of the conflict Goya witnessed, it is generally accepted that he observed first-hand many of the events recorded in the first two groups. A number of other scenes are known to have been related to him second hand. It is known that he used a sketchbook when visiting battle sites; at his studio, he set to work on copper plate once he had absorbed and assimilated meaning from his sketches. All drawings are from the same paper, and all the copper plates are uniform.[Wilson-Bareau, 57]
The titles of a number of scenes link pairs or larger groups, even if the scenes themselves are not related. Examples include plates 2 and 3 (''With or without reason'' and ''The same''), 4 and 5 (''The women are courageous'' and ''And they are fierce''), and 9, 10 and 11 (''They do not want to'', ''Nor these'' and ''Or these''). Other plates show scenes from the same story or incident, as in plates 46 and 47 (''This is bad'' and ''This is how it happened''), in which a monk is murdered by French soldiers looting church treasures; a rare sympathetic image of the clergy, who are generally shown to be on the side of oppression and injustice.[Fremont-Barnes, Gregory. ''The Napoleonic wars: the Peninsular War 1807–1814''. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2002. 73. ]
The Bermúdez set is considered "uniquely important ... because it shows the series as Goya must have intended to publish it, and the way he intended the plates to be printed". There is therefore a distinction between the published edition of 1863, with 80 plates, and the full series in the album, which contains 82 (ignoring the three small ''Prisioneros''). The Bermúdez album was borrowed by the Academy for the 1863 edition. The original titles or captions were etched onto the plates, even with Goya's spelling mistakes. One title was changed,[The title of plate 69 was altered as "apparently ... too nihilistic" from Goya's ''Nada. Ello lo dice'' to ''Nada. Ello dirá'' (Wilson-Bareau, 57).] one plate had work added and, unlike the proofs, the printing was carried out selectively not wiping ink from areas of the surface of the plates, producing " surface tone", in accordance with mid-century taste.
Goya mostly used the tonal technique of aquatint, in which he became very skilled in producing dramatic contrasts, fully satisfying his needs for tonal effects. Reflecting the mid-19th century taste for a "rich overall tone", the 1863 edition took the "disastrous" decision to make considerable use of surface tone, which is not seen in the few early impressions made by Goya himself. Instead of the "luminosity and delicacy" of these, the later editions "provide a dulled and distorted reflection of the artist's intentions", according to Juliet Wilson Bareau
Juliet Capulet () is the female protagonist in William Shakespeare's romantic tragedy ''Romeo and Juliet''. A 13-year-old girl, Juliet is the only daughter of the patriarch of the House of Capulet. She falls in love with the male protagonist Ro ...
.
''The Disasters of War'' was not published during Goya's lifetime, possibly because he feared political repercussions from Fernando VII's repressive regime.[It has been suggested that Goya numbered the initial set of 56 plates in 1814, during a few months of national optimism following the end of the war, with the intent of publishing them then. However, on 11 May 1814, Fernando VII declared that the war would be forgotten and nullified the constitution, making publication impossible (Sayre, 128–129).] Some art historians suggest that he did not publish because he was sceptical about the use of images for political motives, and instead saw them as a personal meditation and release. Most, however, believe the artist preferred to wait until they could be made public without censorship.[Licht speculates, "These plates obviously had to be created by the artist without any further thought about their ultimate purpose. Goya never intended them for publication during his lifetime." (Licht, 128). Wilson-Bareau and Hughes disagree, see Wilson-Bareau p. 59 and ''passim'' in chapter 4.] A further four editions were published, the last in 1937, so that in total over 1,000 impressions of each print have been printed, though not all of the same quality. As with his other series, later impressions show wear to the aquatint. The 1863 edition had 500 impressions, and editions followed in 1892 (100) before which the plates were probably steel-faced to prevent further wear, 1903 (100), 1906 (275), and 1937. Many sets have been broken up, and most print room
A print room is a room in an art gallery or museum where a collection of old master and modern prints, usually together with drawings, watercolours, and photographs, are held and viewed.
A further meaning is a room decorated by pasting prints ...
collections will have at least some of the set. Examples, especially from later editions, are available on the art market.
In 1873, Spanish novelist Antonio de Trueba published the purported reminiscences of Goya's gardener, Isidro, on the genesis of the series. de Trueba claims to have spoken to Isidro in 1836, when the gardener recalled accompanying Goya to the hill of Principe Pio to sketch the victims of the executions of 3 May 1808.["As midnight approached, my master said, 'Isidro, take your gun and come with me.' I obeyed him and where do you think we went?—To that hill where the bodies of those poor people still lay .... My master opened his portfolio, put it on his lap and waited for the moon to come out from behind the large cloud that was hiding it .... At last the moon shone so brightly that it seemed like daylight. Amidst the pools of blood, we could make out some of the corpses—some lying on their backs, others on their bellies; this one in a kneeling position, that one with his arms raised toward heaven, begging for vengeance or mercy .... While I stared at the terrible scene, filled with dread, my master drew it. We returned home and the next morning my master showed me his first print of ''La Guerra'', which I looked at in horror. 'Sir,' I asked him, 'Why do you draw these barbarities which men commit?' He replied, 'To warn men not to be barbarians ever again.' "Ferrari, Enrique Lafuente; Licht et al, 82–83] Goya scholars are sceptical of the account; Nigel Glendinning described it as a "romantic fantasy", and detailed its many inaccuracies.[In a BBC television documentary, Glendinning said: "Trueba is clearly romanticising the artist, making the artist fearless and heroic, I mean not to just observe through the spy glass these terrible things that are happening, but actually going to see them ... None of this corresponds at all to the reality of the shootings. Because we know the shootings took place at four or five o'clock in the morning. Some modern experts point out it was also raining, and so the idea that Goya is going out at midnight, he's not going to see anything. None of this fits with historical information we have." Glendinning also pointed out that Trueba places Goya in his house known as ''Quinta del Sordo''. Goya moved into this house in 1819, after the war, casting further doubt on Trueba's version. See ''The Private Life of a Masterpiece: The Third of May, 1808'', Tx BBC2, 26 January 2004; released on DVD by 2 Entertain Video, 2007.]
Technique and style
Detailing and protesting the ugliness of life is a common theme throughout the history of Spanish art, from the dwarves of Diego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...
to Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
's ''Guernica
Guernica (, ), official name (reflecting the Basque language) Gernika (), is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, Spain. The town of Guernica is one part (along with neighbouring Lumo) of the mu ...
'' (1937). Reflecting on ''The Disasters of War'', biographer Margherita Abbruzzese notes that Goya asks that the truth "be seen and ... shown to others; including those who have no wish to see it .... And the blind in spirit stay their eyes on the outward aspect of things, then these outward aspects must be twisted and deformed until they cry out what they are trying to say." The series follows a wider European tradition of war art and the examination of the effect of military conflict on civilian life—probably mostly known to Goya via prints. This tradition is reflected especially in Dutch depictions of the Eighty Years' War
The Eighty Years' War or Dutch Revolt ( nl, Nederlandse Opstand) ( c.1566/1568–1648) was an armed conflict in the Habsburg Netherlands between disparate groups of rebels and the Spanish government. The causes of the war included the Refo ...
with Spain, and in the work of 16th-century German artists like Hans Baldung
Hans Baldung (1484 or 1485 – September 1545), called Hans Baldung Grien, (being an early nickname, because of his predilection for the colour green), was a painter, printer, engraver, draftsman, and stained glass artist, who was considered th ...
. It is believed Goya owned a copy of a famous set of 18 etchings by Jacques Callot
Jacques Callot (; – 1635) was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine (an independent state on the north-eastern border of France, southwestern border of Germany and overlapping the southern Netherlands). He is an impo ...
known as ''Les Grandes Misères de la guerre
''Les Grandes Misères de la guerre'' (; English: ''The Great Miseries of War'' or ''The Miseries and Misfortunes of War'') are a series of 18 etchings by French artist Jacques Callot (1592–1635), titled in full ''Les Misères et les Malheurs d ...
'' (1633), which record the devastating impact on Lorraine
Lorraine , also , , ; Lorrain: ''Louréne''; Lorraine Franconian: ''Lottringe''; german: Lothringen ; lb, Loutrengen; nl, Lotharingen is a cultural and historical region in Northeastern France, now located in the administrative region of Gr ...
of Louis XIII
Louis XIII (; sometimes called the Just; 27 September 1601 – 14 May 1643) was King of France from 1610 until his death in 1643 and King of Navarre (as Louis II) from 1610 to 1620, when the crown of Navarre was merged with the French crown ...
's troops during the Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was one of the longest and most destructive conflicts in European history
The history of Europe is traditionally divided into four time periods: prehistoric Europe (prior to about 800 BC), classical antiquity (80 ...
.
The dead man in plate 37, '' Esto es peor'' (''This is worse''), forms a mutilated body of a Spanish fighter spiked on a tree, surrounded by the corpses of French soldiers. It is based in part on the Hellenistic
In Classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the emergence of the Roman Empire, as signified by the Battle of Actium in ...
fragment of a male nude, the ''Belvedere Torso
__NOTOC__
The Belvedere Torso is a tall fragmentary marble statue of a male nude, known to be in Rome from the 1430s, and signed prominently on the front of the base by "Apollonios, son of Nestor, Athenian", who is unmentioned in ancient litera ...
'' by the Athenian "Apollonios son of Nestor". Goya had earlier made a black wash drawing study of the statue during a visit to Rome. In ''Esto es peor'' he subverts the classical motifs used in war art through his addition of a degree of black theatre—the branch piercing the body through the anus, twisted neck and close framing.[Stoichita and Coderch, 95–96] The man is naked; a daring factor for Spanish art in the 19th century, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition ( es, Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición), commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition ( es, Inquisición española), was established in 1478 by the Catholic Monarchs, King Ferdinand ...
. Art critic Robert Hughes remarked that the figures in this image "remind us that, if only they had been marble and the work of their destruction had been done by time rather than sabres, neo-classicists like Menges would have been in aesthetic raptures over them."
Goya abandons colour in the series, believing that light, shade and shadow provide for a more direct expression of the truth. He wrote, "In art there is no need for colour. Give me a crayon and I will 'paint' your portrait." He uses line not so much to delineate shape but, according to art historian Anne Hollander, "to scratch forms into existence and then splinter them, as a squinting, half blind eye might apprehend them, to create the distorting visual detritus that shudders around the edge of things seen in agonized haste .... This 'graphic' kind of clarity can be most sharp when it is most jagged." The immediacy of the approach suited his desire to convey the primitive side of man's nature. He was not the first to work in this manner; Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...
had sought a similar directness, but did not have access to aquatint. William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
and Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli ( ; German: Johann Heinrich Füssli ; 7 February 1741 – 17 April 1825) was a Swiss painter, draughtsman and writer on art who spent much of his life in Britain. Many of his works, such as ''The Nightmare'', deal with supernatura ...
, contemporaries of Goya's, produced works with similarly fantastical content, but, as Hollander describes, they muted its disturbing impact with "exquisitely applied linearity ... lodging it firmly in the safe citadels of beauty and rhythm."
In his 1947 book on Goya's etchings, English author Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley ...
observed that the images depict a recurrent series of pictorial themes: darkened archways "more sinister than those even of Piranesi
Giovanni Battista (or Giambattista) Piranesi (; also known as simply Piranesi; 4 October 1720 – 9 November 1778) was an Italian Classical archaeologist, architect, and artist, famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric ...
's ''Prisons''"; street corners as settings for the cruelty of the disparities of class; and silhouetted hilltops carrying the dead, sometimes featuring a single tree serving as gallows or repository for dismembered corpses. "And so the record proceeds, horror after horror, unalleviated by any of the splendors which other painters have been able to discover in war; for, significantly, Goya never illustrates an engagement, never shows us impressive masses of troops marching in column or deployed in the order of battle .... All he shows us is war's disasters and squalors, without any of the glory or even picturesqueness."[Huxley, 12–13]
''The Disasters of War'' is the second of Goya's four major print series, which constitute almost all of his most important work in the medium. He also created 35 prints early in his career—many of which are reproductions of his portraits and other works—and about 16 lithograph
Lithography () is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone (lithographic limestone) or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German a ...
s while living in France. His first series, the 80-plate ''Caprichos
''Los caprichos'' (''The Caprices)'' is a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching created by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya in 1797–1798, and published as an album in 1799. The prints were an artistic experiment: a medium for Goya's condem ...
'', were completed between 1797 and 1799 to document "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and ... the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual." ''Caprichos'' was put on sale in 1799, but was almost immediately withdrawn after threats from the Inquisition
The Inquisition was a group of institutions within the Catholic Church whose aim was to combat heresy, conducting trials of suspected heretics. Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, ...
. In ''The Disasters of War''s first two groups of prints, Goya largely departs from the imaginative, synthetic approach of ''Caprichos'' to realistically depict life-and-death scenes of war. In the last group, the ''Caprichos'' sense of the fantastic returns.
Between 1815 and 1816, Goya produced the '' Tauromachia'', a series of 33 bullfighting
Bullfighting is a physical contest that involves a bullfighter attempting to subdue, immobilize, or kill a bull, usually according to a set of rules, guidelines, or cultural expectations.
There are several variations, including some forms wh ...
scenes, during a break from ''The Disasters of War''. ''Tauromachia'' was not politically sensitive, and was published at the end of 1816 in an edition of 320—for sale individually or in sets—without incident. It did not meet with critical or commercial success. While in France, Goya completed a set of four larger lithographs, '' Los toros de Burdeos'' (''The Bulls of Bordeaux''). His final series, known as ''Los Disparates
''Los disparates'' (''The Follies''), also known as ''Proverbios'' (''Proverbs'') or ''Sueños'' (''Dreams''), is a series of prints in etching and aquatint, with retouching in drypoint and engraving, created by Spanish painter and printmaker Fra ...
'' (''The Follies''), ''Proverbios'' (''Proverbs''), or ''Sueños'' (''Dreams''), contains 22 large plates and at least five drawings that are seemingly part of the series but which were never etched. All these were left in Madrid—apparently incomplete and with only a handful of proofs printed—when Goya went to France in 1823. One plate is known to have been etched in 1816, but little else is established about the chronology of the works, or Goya's plans for the set.
Goya worked on ''The Disasters of War'' during a period when he was producing images more for his own satisfaction than for any contemporary audience.[Goya's introspection late in this period can be witnessed in the enigmatic '']Black Paintings
The ''Black Paintings'' (Spanish: ''Pinturas negras'') is the name given to a group of 14 paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819 and 1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his ...
'' which he painted directly onto the walls of his house between 1819 and 1823. His work came to rely less on historical incidents than his own imagination. Many of the later plates contain fantastical motifs which can be seen as a return to the imagery of the ''Caprichos''. In this, he is relying on visual clues derived from his inner life, rather than anything that could be recognised from real events or settings.[Hollander, 253]
Interpretation
In ''The Disasters of War'', Goya does not excuse any purpose to the random slaughter—the plates are devoid of the consolation of divine order or the dispensation of human justice.[Licht, 130–152] This in part a result of the absence of melodrama or consciously artful presentation that would distance the viewer from the brutality of the subjects, as found in Baroque
The Baroque (, ; ) is a style of architecture, music, dance, painting, sculpture, poetry, and other arts that flourished in Europe from the early 17th century until the 1750s. In the territories of the Spanish and Portuguese empires including t ...
martyrdom. In addition, Goya refuses to offer the stability of traditional narrative. Instead, his composition tends to highlight the most disturbing aspects of each work.[Licht, 132–142]
The plates are set spaces without fixed boundaries; the mayhem extends outside the frames of the picture plane in all directions. Thus, they express the randomness of violence, and in their immediacy and brutality they have been described as analogous to 19th- and 20th-century photojournalism
Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography (such ...
.[Licht, 130–133, 143–144] According to Robert Hughes, as with Goya's earlier ''Caprichos'' series, ''The Disasters of War'' is likely to have been intended as a "social speech"; satires on the then prevailing "hysteria, evil, cruelty and irrationality ndthe absence of wisdom" of Spain under Napoleon, and later the Inquisition.[Hughes (1990), 63] It is evident Goya viewed the Spanish war with disillusionment, and despaired both for the violence around him and for the loss of a liberal ideal he believed was being replaced by a new militant unreason. Hughes believed Goya's decision to render the images through etchings, which by definition are absent of colour, indicates feelings of utter hopelessness.
His message late in life is contrary to the humanistic view of man as essentially good but easily corrupted. He seems to be saying that violence is innate in man, "forged in the substance of what, since Freud
Sigmund Freud ( , ; born Sigismund Schlomo Freud; 6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939) was an Austrian neurologist and the founder of psychoanalysis, a clinical method for evaluating and treating pathologies explained as originating in conflicts in ...
, we have called the id." Hughes believed that in the end there is only the violated emptiness of acceptance of our fallen nature: like the painting of Goya's dog, "whose master is as absent from him as God is from Goya."
''The Disasters of War'' plates are preoccupied with wasted bodies, undifferentiated body parts, castration and female abjection. There are dark erotic undertones to a number of the works. Connell notes the innate sexuality of the image in plate 7—Agustina de Aragón
Agustina Raimunda Maria Saragossa i Domènech or Agustina of Aragón (March 4, 1786 – May 29, 1857) was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Peninsular War, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Arm ...
's igniting a long cannon. The art historian Lennard Davis suggests that Goya was fascinated with the "erotics of dismemberment", while Hughes mentions plate 10 in ''Los disparates'', which shows a woman carried in the grip of a horse's mouth. To Hughes, the woman's euphoria suggests, among other possible meanings, orgasm.
Contrary to the idea of an erotic charge, the art historian, John J. Ciofalo, writes, that the artist's illness in 1793 and the deafness that resulted dramatically changed his art thereafter. But the 1808-14 "Spanish War for Independence"--"a violent convulsion of anarchy, starvation, and slaughter--injected his art with a new psychological sensibility, one that probed deep into the foundations of culture and the human psyche, into the lightless cracks and fissures created when these foundations are shattered by war," by ''guerrilla'' warfare. Goya sought to depict this modern mode of warfare, breaking down, by any means necessary, of the enemy's morale, and this includes disturbing images of rape against the walls of ruined buildings and in broad daylight. Far from being erotically charged, they are manifestly violent and abhorrent.
Legacy
Despite being one of the most significant anti-war works of art, ''The Disasters of War'' had no impact on the European consciousness for two generations, as it was not seen outside a small circle in Spain until it was published by Madrid's Royal Academy of San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (RABASF; ), located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery. A public law corporation, it is integrated together with other Spanish royal acade ...
in 1863.
Since then, interpretations in successive eras have reflected the sensibilities of the time. Goya was seen as a proto- Romantic in the early 19th century, and the series' graphically rendered dismembered carcasses were a direct influence on Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault (; 26 September 1791 – 26 January 1824) was a French painter and lithographer, whose best-known painting is ''The Raft of the Medusa''. Although he died young, he was one of the pioneers of the Romantic ...
,[Hughes (1990), 51] best known for the politically charged ''Raft of the Medusa
''The Raft of the Medusa'' (french: Le Radeau de la Méduse ) – originally titled ''Scène de Naufrage'' (''Shipwreck Scene'') – is an oil painting of 1818–19 by the French Romantic painter and lithographer Théodore Géricault (1791 ...
'' (1818–19). Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés (; 22 February 1900 – 29 July 1983) was a Spanish-Mexican filmmaker who worked in France, Mexico, and Spain. He has been widely considered by many film critics, historians, and directors to be one of the greatest and m ...
identified with Goya's sense of the absurd, and referenced his works in such films as the 1930 ''L'Âge d'Or
''L'Age d'Or'' (french: L'Âge d'Or, ), commonly translated as ''The Golden Age'' or ''Age of Gold'', is a 1930 French surrealist satirical comedy film directed by Luis Buñuel about the insanities of modern life, the hypocrisy of the sexual m ...
'', on which he collaborated with Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...
, and his 1962 ''The Exterminating Angel
''The Exterminating Angel'' ( es, El ángel exterminador, links=no) is a 1962 Mexican surrealist film written and directed by Luis Buñuel, starring Silvia Pinal, and produced by Pinal's then-husband Gustavo Alatriste. It tells the story of a g ...
''.
The series' impact on Dalí is evident in '' Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)'', painted in 1936 in response to events leading to the Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
. Here, the distorted limbs, brutal suppression, agonised expressions and ominous clouds are reminiscent of plate 39, ''Grande hazaña! Con muertos!'' (''A heroic feat! With dead men!''), in which mutilated bodies are shown against a backdrop barren landscape.[Licht, 151]
In 1993, Jake and Dinos Chapman
Iakovos "Jake" Chapman (born 1966) and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman (born 1962) are British visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers. Their subject matter tries to be deliberately shocking, including, in 2008, a series of works that ...
of the Young British Artists
The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsm ...
movement created 82 miniature, toy-like sculptures modelled on ''The Disasters of War''. The works were widely acclaimed and purchased that year by the Tate
Tate is an institution that houses, in a network of four art galleries, the United Kingdom's national collection of British art, and international modern and contemporary art. It is not a government institution, but its main sponsor is the U ...
gallery. For decades, Goya's series of etching served as a constant point of reference for the Chapman brothers; in particular, they created a number of variations based on the plate ''Grande hazaña! Con muertos!''.
In 2003, the Chapman brothers exhibited an altered version of ''The Disasters of War''. They purchased a complete set of prints,[An edition that had been published in 1937, as a protest against fascist atrocities in the ]Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil War ( es, Guerra Civil Española)) or The Revolution ( es, La Revolución, link=no) among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War ( es, Cuarta Guerra Carlista, link=no) among Carlists, and The Rebellion ( es, La Rebelión, lin ...
. over which they drew and pasted demonic clown and puppy heads. The Chapmans described their "rectified" images as making a connection between Napoleon's supposed introduction of Enlightenment ideals to early-19th-century Spain and Tony Blair
Sir Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (born 6 May 1953) is a British former politician who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007. He previously served as Leader of th ...
and George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd president of the United States from 2001 to 2009. A member of the Republican Party, Bush family, and son of the 41st president George H. W. Bush, he ...
purporting to bring democracy to Iraq.[Gibbons, Fiachra.]
Chapman brothers 'rectify' Disasters of War. Art's enfants terribles pay tribute to Goya
. ''The Guardian'', 31 March 2003. Retrieved 29 August 2009.
Gallery
Notes
References
Sources
* Clark, Kenneth.
Looking at Pictures
'. Boston: Beacon Press, 1968.
* Connell, Evan S. ''Francisco Goya: A Life''. New York: Counterpoint, 2004.
* Cottom, Daniel. ''Unhuman Culture''. University of Pennsylvania, 2006.
* Hughes, Robert. ''Goya''. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004.
* Hughes, Robert. ''Nothing If Not Critical''. London: The Harvill Press, 1990.
* Huxley, Aldous
Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
Born into the prominent Huxley ...
. ''The Complete Etchings of Goya''. New York: Crown Publishers, 1947.
* Licht, Fred. ''Goya: The Origins of the Modern Temper in Art''. Universe Books, 1979.
* McDonald, Mark. ''Disasters of War: Etchings by Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, from the unique album of proofs printed by the artist, in the collection of the British Museum ''. 2 volumes. London: Folio Society, 2014.
* Sayre, Eleanor A. ''The Changing Image: Prints by Francisco Goya''. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1974.
* Shaw, Philip. "Abjection Sustained: Goya, the Chapman Brothers and the 'Disasters of War'". ''Art History'' 26, no. 4 (September 2003).
* Stoichita, Victor and Coderch, Anna Maria. ''Goya: the Last Carnival''. London: Reaktion books, 1999.
* Tomlinson, Janis. ''Graphic Evolutions: Prints by Goya from the Collection of the Arthur Ross Foundation''. Exh. cat. Columbia Studies on Art, 2. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989.
* Wilson-Bareau, Juliet. ''Goya's Prints, The Tomás Harris Collection in the British Museum''. London: British Museum Publications, 1981.
External links
80 zoomable images
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Disasters Of War
Disaster
A disaster is a serious problem occurring over a short or long period of time that causes widespread human, material, economic or environmental loss which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources ...
1810s prints
19th-century etchings
Prints and drawings in the British Museum
Anti-war works
Military art
War art