The Disasters of War
Encyclopedia
The Disasters of War (Spanish: Los Desastres de la Guerra) are a series of 8280 prints in the first published edition (1863), for which the last two plates were not available. See "Execution". prints
created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker
Francisco Goya
(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
, the subsequent Peninsular War
of 1808–14 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy
in 1814. During the conflicts between Napoleon's French Empire
and Spain, Goya retained his position as first court painter
to the Spanish crown and continued to produce portraits of the Spanish and French rulers. Although deeply affected by the war, he kept private his thoughts on the art he produced in response to the conflict and its aftermath. 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. In total over a thousand sets have been printed, though later ones are of lower quality, and most print room
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
given to a friend reads: Fatal consequences of Spain's bloody war with Bonaparte, and other emphatic caprices (Spanish: Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte, Y otros caprichos enfáticos). 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.
The series was produced using a variety of intaglio printmaking
techniques, mainly etching
for the line work and aquatint
for the tonal areas, but also engraving
and drypoint
. 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
and opposed both state and religious reform. Since their first publication, Goya's scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the "prodigious flowering of rage" as well as the "work of a memory that knew no forgiveness." The serial nature in which the plates unfold has led some to see the images as similar in nature to photography.
declared himself First Consul of the French Republic on 18 February 1799, and was crowned Emperor in 1804. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, it was politically and strategically important to the French. The reigning Spanish sovereign, Charles IV
, was internationally regarded as ineffectual, 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
, who would take the title "Prince of the Algarve". 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, 23,000 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
; 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
, believed that Spain would benefit from rulers who were more progressive and competent than the Bourbons
. They decided that Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte
, should be king. Under a pretext of mediation, Napoleon summoned Charles and Ferdinand to Bayonne
, France, where they were coerced into relinquishing their rights to the throne in favour of Joseph.
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
, and hoped its ideals would help liberate Spain from feudalism
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.
Several of Goya's friends, including the poets Juan Meléndez Valdés
and Leandro Fernández de Moratín
, 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
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. ISBN 0-947645-46-2 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.
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 from 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.
The group begins with Tristes premoniciones de lo que ha de acontecer (Gloomy premonitions 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, bayoneting civilians", while Spanish civilians are shown "poleaxing the French." 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).
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
(1786–1857), the heroine of Zaragoza
, who brought food to the cannon
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. 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
and second
phases of the siege that inspired him to produce the series.
'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. 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". 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
in these prints; Goya was sometimes forced to use defective plates or reuse old plates after they were burnish
ed.
") in the original series title."Caprichos enfáticos" is difficult to translate; in the 18th century language of rhetoric
, "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
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
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. 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
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. 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. Some prints showing animal scenes seem to draw from a satirical verse fable by Giovanni Battista Casti
, published in Italian in 1802; the Animal Farm
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".
A number of plates in this group reveal a scepticism towards idolatry
of religious images. There are instances in the group where early Christian iconography, in particular statues and procession
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 Stochita 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".
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
, intended as a personification of Spain
, Truth, or the Constitution of 1812
—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, "[Goya's] otherwise 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
, to his friend Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez
. 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
(Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando), of which Goya had been director. Numbers 81 and 82 rejoined the others in the Academy in 1870, and were not published until 1957.
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 calls the "drastic step" of destroying two depicting landscapes, from which very few impressions had been printed. These were cut in half to produce four of The Disasters of Wars prints. 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.
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 woman 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.
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 the printing was carried out with much more ink on the plates (producing "surface tone") than in the proofs, in accordance with mid-century taste. 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 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
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.
to Pablo Picasso
's Guernica
(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 with Spain, and in the work of 16th-century German artists like Hans Baldung
. It is believed Goya owned a copy of a famous set of 18 etchings by Jacques Callot
known as Les Grandes Misères de la guerre
(1633), which record the devastating impact on Lorraine
of Louis XIII
's troops during the Thirty Years' War
.
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
fragment of a male nude, the Belvedere Torso
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. The man is naked; a daring factor for Spanish art in the 19th century, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition
. 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 had sought a similar directness, but did not have access to aquatint. William Blake
and Henry Fuseli
, 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
observed that the images depict a recurrent series of pictorial themes: darkened archways "more sinister than those even of Piranesi
'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."
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 lithographs while living in France. Goya created his first series, the 80-plate Caprichos, 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
. In The Disasters of Wars 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
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. 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
(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
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.
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.
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
. 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 [and] the absence of wisdom" of Spain under Napoleon, and later the Inquisition. 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 believes 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
, we have called the id
." Hughes believes 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
'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.
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
, best known for the politically charged Raft of the Medusa (1818–19). Luis Buñuel
identified with Goya's sense of the absurd, and referenced his works in such films as the 1930 L'Âge d'Orl, on which he collaborated with Salvador Dalí, and his 1962 The Exterminating Angel.
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
. 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.
In 1993, Jake and Dinos Chapman
of the Young British Artists
movement created 82 miniature, toy-like sculptures modelled on The Disasters of War. The works were widely acclaimed and were purchased that year by the Tate
gallery. 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
. 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
and George W. Bush
purporting to bring democracy to Iraq.
Old master print
An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...
created between 1810 and 1820 by the Spanish painter and printmaker
Printmaking
Printmaking is the process of making artworks by printing, normally on paper. Printmaking normally covers only the process of creating prints with an element of originality, rather than just being a photographic reproduction of a painting. Except in the case of monotyping, the process is capable...
Francisco Goya
Francisco Goya
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was a Spanish romantic painter and printmaker regarded both as the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Goya was a court painter to the Spanish Crown, and through his works was both a commentator on and chronicler of his era...
(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
Dos de Mayo Uprising
On the second of May , 1808, the people of Madrid rebelled against the occupation of the city by French troops, provoking a brutal repression by the French Imperial forces and triggering the Peninsular War.-Background:...
, the subsequent Peninsular War
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
of 1808–14 and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy
Bourbon Restoration
The Bourbon Restoration is the name given to the period following the successive events of the French Revolution , the end of the First Republic , and then the forcible end of the First French Empire under Napoleon – when a coalition of European powers restored by arms the monarchy to the...
in 1814. During the conflicts between Napoleon's French Empire
First French Empire
The First French Empire , also known as the Greater French Empire or Napoleonic Empire, was the empire of Napoleon I of France...
and Spain, Goya retained his position as first court painter
Court painter
A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or noble family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Especially in the late Middle Ages, they were often given the office of valet de chambre...
to the Spanish crown and continued to produce portraits of the Spanish and French rulers. Although deeply affected by the war, he kept private his thoughts on the art he produced in response to the conflict and its aftermath. 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. In total over a thousand sets have been printed, though later ones are of lower quality, and most print room
Print room
A print room is either a room or industrial building where printing takes place, or 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. The latter meaning is the subject of this...
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
Artist's proof
An artist's proof is, at least in theory, an impression of a print taken in the printmaking process to see the current printing state of a plate while the plate is being worked on by the artist...
given to a friend reads: Fatal consequences of Spain's bloody war with Bonaparte, and other emphatic caprices (Spanish: Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra en España con Buonaparte, Y otros caprichos enfáticos). 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.
The series was produced using a variety of intaglio printmaking
Intaglio (printmaking)
Intaglio is a family of printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface, known as the matrix or plate, and the incised line or area holds the ink. Normally, copper or zinc plates are used as a surface, and the incisions are created by etching, engraving, drypoint, aquatint or...
techniques, mainly etching
Etching
Etching is the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio in the metal...
for the line work and aquatint
Aquatint
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...
for the tonal areas, but also engraving
Engraving
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on to a hard, usually flat surface, by cutting grooves into it. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing...
and drypoint
Drypoint
Drypoint is a printmaking technique of the intaglio family, in which an image is incised into a plate with a hard-pointed "needle" of sharp metal or diamond point. Traditionally the plate was copper, but now acetate, zinc, or plexiglas are also commonly used...
. 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
Spanish Constitution of 1812
The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was promulgated 19 March 1812 by the Cádiz Cortes, the national legislative assembly of Spain, while in refuge from the Peninsular War...
and opposed both state and religious reform. Since their first publication, Goya's scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the "prodigious flowering of rage" as well as the "work of a memory that knew no forgiveness." 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 FranceNapoleon I of France
Napoleon Bonaparte was a French military and political leader during the latter stages of the French Revolution.As Napoleon I, he was Emperor of the French from 1804 to 1815...
declared himself First Consul of the French Republic on 18 February 1799, and was crowned Emperor in 1804. Because Spain controlled access to the Mediterranean, it was politically and strategically important to the French. The reigning Spanish sovereign, Charles IV
Charles IV of Spain
Charles IV was King of Spain from 14 December 1788 until his abdication on 19 March 1808.-Early life:...
, was internationally regarded as ineffectual, 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 de Godoy
Don Manuel Francisco Domingo de Godoy y Álvarez de Faria, de los Ríos y Sánchez-Zarzosa, also Manuel de Godoy y Álvarez de Faria de los Ríos Sánchez Zarzosa , was Prime Minister of Spain from 1792 to 1797 and from 1801 to 1808...
, who would take the title "Prince of the Algarve". 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, 23,000 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
Mutiny of Aranjuez
The Mutiny of Aranjuez, or Motín de Aranjuez as it is known in Spain, was an early nineteenth century popular uprising against King Charles IV, which managed to overthrow him and place his son, Ferdinand VII, on the throne...
—incited by Ferdinand's supporters—saw Godoy captured and left Charles with no choice but to abdicate
Abdication
Abdication occurs when a monarch, such as a king or emperor, renounces his office.-Terminology:The word abdication comes derives from the Latin abdicatio. meaning to disown or renounce...
; 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
Joachim-Napoléon Murat , Marshal of France and Grand Admiral or Admiral of France, 1st Prince Murat, was Grand Duke of Berg from 1806 to 1808 and then King of Naples from 1808 to 1815...
, believed that Spain would benefit from rulers who were more progressive and competent than the Bourbons
House of Bourbon
The House of Bourbon is a European royal house, a branch of the Capetian dynasty . Bourbon kings first ruled Navarre and France in the 16th century. By the 18th century, members of the Bourbon dynasty also held thrones in Spain, Naples, Sicily, and Parma...
. They decided that Napoleon's brother, Joseph Bonaparte
Joseph Bonaparte
Joseph-Napoléon Bonaparte was the elder brother of Napoleon Bonaparte, who made him King of Naples and Sicily , and later King of Spain...
, should be king. Under a pretext of mediation, Napoleon summoned Charles and Ferdinand to Bayonne
Bayonne
Bayonne is a city and commune in south-western France at the confluence of the Nive and Adour rivers, in the Pyrénées-Atlantiques department, of which it is a sub-prefecture...
, France, where they were coerced into relinquishing their rights to the throne in favour of Joseph.
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, and hoped its ideals would help liberate Spain from feudalism
Feudalism
Feudalism was a set of legal and military customs in medieval Europe that flourished between the 9th and 15th centuries, which, broadly defined, was a system for ordering society around relationships derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour.Although derived from the...
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.
Several of Goya's friends, including the poets Juan Meléndez Valdés
Juan Meléndez Valdés
Juan Meléndez Valdés was a Spanish neoclassical poet.-Biography:He was born at Ribera del Fresno, in what is now the province of Badajoz. Destined by his parents for the priesthood, he graduated in law at Salamanca, where he became indoctrinated with the ideas of the French philosophical school...
and Leandro Fernández de Moratín
Leandro Fernández de Moratín
Leandro Fernández de Moratín 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 Spain from 1762 until his death in 1780.Distrusting the teaching offered in Spain's universities at...
, 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
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
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. ISBN 0-947645-46-2 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, 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 from 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. 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 girl who is being assaulted by a soldier.The group begins with Tristes premoniciones de lo que ha de acontecer (Gloomy premonitions 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, bayoneting civilians", while Spanish civilians are shown "poleaxing the French." 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).
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 de Aragón
Agustina Raimunda María Saragossa Doménech, or Agustina de Aragón was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army...
(1786–1857), the heroine of Zaragoza
Zaragoza
Zaragoza , also called Saragossa in English, is the capital city of the Zaragoza Province and of the autonomous community of Aragon, Spain...
, who brought food to the cannon
Cannon
A cannon is any piece of artillery that uses gunpowder or other usually explosive-based propellents to launch a projectile. Cannon vary in caliber, range, mobility, rate of fire, angle of fire, and firepower; different forms of cannon combine and balance these attributes in varying degrees,...
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. 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
Siege of Saragossa (1808)
The First Siege of Saragossa was a bloody struggle in the Peninsular War. A French army under General Jean-Antoine Verdier besieged, repeatedly stormed, and was repulsed from the Spanish city of Saragossa over the summer of 1808....
and second
Siege of Saragossa (1809)
The Second Siege of Saragossa was the French capture of the Spanish city of Zaragoza during the Peninsular War.It is particularly noted for its brutality.-Prelude:...
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 WellingtonArthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, KG, GCB, GCH, PC, FRS , was an Irish-born British soldier and statesman, and one of the leading military and political figures of the 19th century...
'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. 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". 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
Aquatint is an intaglio printmaking technique, a variant of etching.Intaglio printmaking makes marks on the matrix that are capable of holding ink. The inked plate is passed through a printing press together with a sheet of paper, resulting in a transfer of the ink to the paper...
in these prints; Goya was sometimes forced to use defective plates or reuse old plates after they were burnish
Burnish
Burnishing is a form of pottery treatment in which the surface of the pot is polished, using a hard smooth surface such as a wooden or bone spatula, smooth stones, plastic, or even glass bulbs, while it still is in a leathery 'green' state, i.e., before firing. After firing, the surface is...
ed.
Bourbons and clergy
Plates 65 to 82 were named "caprichos enfáticos" ("emphatic capricesCapriccio (painting)
In painting, a capriccio , means especially an architectural fantasy, placing together buildings, archaeological remains and other architectural elements in fictional and often fantastical combinations, perhaps with staffage of figures. It fits under the more general term of landscape painting...
") in the original series title."Caprichos enfáticos" is difficult to translate; in the 18th century language of rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
, "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
Capriccio (painting)
In painting, a capriccio , means especially an architectural fantasy, placing together buildings, archaeological remains and other architectural elements in fictional and often fantastical combinations, perhaps with staffage of figures. It fits under the more general term of landscape painting...
, normally suggests light-hearted fantasy, which does not characterise these prints or Los Caprichos
Los Caprichos
Los Caprichos are a set of 80 aquatint prints created by the Spanish artist Francisco Jose de Goya in 1797 and 1798, and published as an album in 1799. The prints were an artistic experiment: a medium for Goya's condemnation of the universal follies and foolishness in the Spanish society in which...
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
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
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. Hughes refers to the group as the "disasters of peace".
After the six years of absolutism
Absolute monarchy
Absolute monarchy is a monarchical form of government in which the monarch exercises ultimate governing authority as head of state and head of government, his or her power not being limited by a constitution or by the law. An absolute monarch thus wields unrestricted political power over the...
that followed Ferdinand's return to the throne on 1 January 1820, Rafael del Riego
Rafael del Riego
Rafael del Riego y Nuñez was a Spanish general and liberal politician, who played a key role in the outbreak of the Liberal Triennium .-Early life and action in the Peninsular War:...
initiated an army revolt with the intent of restoring the 1812 Constitution
Spanish Constitution of 1812
The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was promulgated 19 March 1812 by the Cádiz Cortes, the national legislative assembly of Spain, while in refuge from the Peninsular War...
. 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
Quintuple Alliance
The Quintuple Alliance came into being at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818, when France joined the Quadruple Alliance created by Russia, Austria, Prussia and the United Kingdom...
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. 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. Some prints showing animal scenes seem to draw from a satirical verse fable by Giovanni Battista Casti
Giovanni Battista Casti
Giovanni Battista Casti was an Italian poet, satirist, and author of comic opera librettos, born in Acquapendente...
, published in Italian in 1802; the Animal Farm
Animal Farm
Animal Farm is an allegorical novella by George Orwell published in England on 17 August 1945. According to Orwell, the book reflects events leading up to and during the Stalin era before World War II...
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".
A number of plates in this group reveal a scepticism towards idolatry
Idolatry
Idolatry is a pejorative term for the worship of an idol, a physical object such as a cult image, as a god, or practices believed to verge on worship, such as giving undue honour and regard to created forms other than God. In all the Abrahamic religions idolatry is strongly forbidden, although...
of religious images. There are instances in the group where early Christian iconography, in particular statues and procession
Procession
A procession is an organized body of people advancing in a formal or ceremonial manner.-Procession elements:...
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 Stochita 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".
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
Wreath
A wreath is an assortment of flowers, leaves, fruits, twigs and/or various materials that is constructed to resemble a ring. They are used typically as Christmas decorations to symbolize the coming of Christ, also known as the Advent season in Christianity. They are also used as festive headdresses...
, intended as a personification of Spain
Allegory of Hispania
The allegory of Hispania is the national personification of Spain. She appeared on aurei of Hadrian in the early 2nd century, and then on the Spanish peseta from 1870....
, Truth, or the Constitution of 1812
Spanish Constitution of 1812
The Spanish Constitution of 1812 was promulgated 19 March 1812 by the Cádiz Cortes, the national legislative assembly of Spain, while in refuge from the Peninsular War...
—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, "[Goya's] otherwise 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 from Valentín Carderera, who probably got them from Goya's grandson. In 1951, they were sold to the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. 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 MuseumBritish Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
, to his friend Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez
Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez
Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez was a Spanish writer on art.Bermúdez was born in Gijón, Asturias. Also in relation to Clara M. Bermudez of the Miami Bermudezs. He founded an art academy at Seville, and was given responsibility to order the Archivo General de Indias or the repository of documents...
. 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
Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery....
(Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando), of which Goya had been director. Numbers 81 and 82 rejoined the others in the Academy in 1870, and were not published until 1957.
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 calls the "drastic step" of destroying two depicting landscapes, from which very few impressions had been printed. These were cut in half to produce four of The Disasters of Wars prints. 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
Peninsular War
The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...
, 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.
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 woman 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.
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 the printing was carried out with much more ink on the plates (producing "surface tone") than in the proofs, in accordance with mid-century taste. 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 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
Print room
A print room is either a room or industrial building where printing takes place, or 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. The latter meaning is the subject of this...
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
Antonio de Trueba
Antonio de Trueba was a Spanish poet, novelist, and folklorist born at Montellana, Biscay, in 1821 , where he was privately educated....
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
Príncipe Pío
La montaña del Príncipe Pío is the name of a hill in the western part of Madrid, Spain.It is named after the prince Pius of Savoy, who owned property there.Later, barracks were constructed there....
to sketch the victims of the executions of 3 May 1808
The Third of May 1808
The Third of May 1808 is a painting completed in 1814 by the Spanish painter Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. In the work, Goya sought to commemorate Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the occupation of 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 VelázquezDiego Velázquez
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez was a Spanish painter who was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV. He was an individualistic artist of the contemporary Baroque period, important as a portrait artist...
to Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
's Guernica
Guernica (painting)
Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso. It was created in response to the bombing of Guernica, Basque Country, by German and Italian warplanes at the behest of the Spanish Nationalist forces, on 26 April 1937, during the Spanish Civil War...
(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 with Spain, and in the work of 16th-century German artists like Hans Baldung
Hans Baldung
Hans Baldung, known as Hans Baldung Grien/Grün was a German Renaissance artist in painting and printmaking in woodcut. He was considered the most gifted student of Albrecht Dürer.-Life:...
. It is believed Goya owned a copy of a famous set of 18 etchings by Jacques Callot
Jacques Callot
Jacques Callot was a baroque printmaker and draftsman from the Duchy of Lorraine . He is an important figure in the development of the old master print...
known as Les Grandes Misères de la guerre
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre
Les Grandes Misères de la guerre are a series of 18 etchings by French artist Jacques Callot , titled in full "Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre". Despite the grand theme of the series, the images are in fact only about 83 mm x 180 mm each, and are called the "large" Miseries to...
(1633), which record the devastating impact on Lorraine
Lorraine (région)
Lorraine is one of the 27 régions of France. The administrative region has two cities of equal importance, Metz and Nancy. Metz is considered to be the official capital since that is where the regional parliament is situated...
of Louis XIII
Louis XIII of France
Louis XIII was a Bourbon monarch who ruled as King of France and of Navarre from 1610 to 1643.Louis was only eight years old when he succeeded his father. His mother, Marie de Medici, acted as regent during Louis' minority...
's troops during the Thirty Years' War
Thirty Years' War
The Thirty Years' War was fought primarily in what is now Germany, and at various points involved most countries in Europe. It was one of the most destructive conflicts in European history....
.
The dead man in plate 37, Esto es peor
This is worse
This is worse is an etching and wash drawing by the Spanish artist Francisco Goya . Completed between 1812–1815, though not published until 1863, it forms part of his Disasters of War series, which Goya created as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising and...
(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
Hellenistic civilization
Hellenistic civilization represents the zenith of Greek influence in the ancient world from 323 BCE to about 146 BCE...
fragment of a male nude, the Belvedere Torso
Belvedere Torso
The Belvedere Torso is a fragment of a nude male statue, signed prominently on the front of the base by an Athenian sculptor "Apollonios son of Nestor", who is unmentioned in ancient literature...
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. The man is naked; a daring factor for Spanish art in the 19th century, during the time of the Spanish Inquisition
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
. Art critic Robert Hughes
Robert Hughes (critic)
Robert Studley Forrest Hughes, AO is an Australian-born art critic, writer and television documentary maker who has resided in New York since 1970.-Early life:...
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
Anton Raphael Mengs
Anton Raphael Mengs was a German painter, active in Rome, Madrid and Saxony, who became one of the precursors to Neoclassical painting.- Biography :Mengs was born in 1728 at Ústí nad Labem in Bohemia...
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 had sought a similar directness, but did not have access to aquatint. William Blake
William Blake
William Blake was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of both the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age...
and Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli
Henry Fuseli was a British painter, draughtsman, and writer on art, of Swiss origin.-Biography:...
, 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 Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
observed that the images depict a recurrent series of pictorial themes: darkened archways "more sinister than those even of Piranesi
Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an Italian artist famous for his etchings of Rome and of fictitious and atmospheric "prisons" .-His Life:...
'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."
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 lithographs while living in France. Goya created his first series, the 80-plate Caprichos, 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
Spanish Inquisition
The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition , commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition , was a tribunal established in 1480 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms, and to replace the Medieval...
. In The Disasters of Wars first two groups of prints, Goya largely departs from the imaginative, synthetic approach of Caprichos to realistically
Realism (arts)
Realism in the visual arts and literature refers to the general attempt to depict subjects "in accordance with secular, empirical rules", as they are considered to exist in third person objective reality, without embellishment or interpretation...
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
Bullfighting is a traditional spectacle of Spain, Portugal, southern France and some Latin American countries , in which one or more bulls are baited in a bullring for sport and entertainment...
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. 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
Los disparates or Los proverbios is a probably-incomplete series of engravings in aquatint and etching, with retouching in drypoint and burin. It was produced by Francisco de Goya between 1815 and 1823....
(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
Black Paintings
The Black Paintings is the name given to a group of paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819–1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and by then, his bleak outlook on humanity...
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.
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. 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 BaroqueBaroque
The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...
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.
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
Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also refers to video used in broadcast journalism...
. 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 [and] the absence of wisdom" of Spain under Napoleon, and later the Inquisition. 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 believes 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
Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...
, we have called the id
Id, ego, and super-ego
Id, ego and super-ego are the three parts of the psychic apparatus defined in Sigmund Freud's structural model of the psyche; they are the three theoretical constructs in terms of whose activity and interaction mental life is described...
." Hughes believes that in the end there is only the violated emptiness of acceptance of our fallen nature: like the painting of Goya's dog
The Dog (Goya)
The Dog is the name usually given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya, now in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. It shows the head of a small black dog gazing upwards...
, "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 de Aragón
Agustina Raimunda María Saragossa Doménech, or Agustina de Aragón was a Spanish heroine who defended Spain during the Spanish War of Independence, first as a civilian and later as a professional officer in the Spanish Army...
'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.
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 FernandoReal Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando
The Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando , located on the Calle de Alcalá in the heart of Madrid, currently functions as a museum and gallery....
in 1863.
Since then, interpretations in successive eras have reflected the sensibilities of the time. Goya was seen as a proto-Romantic
Romanticism
Romanticism was an artistic, literary and intellectual movement that originated in the second half of the 18th century in Europe, and gained strength in reaction to the Industrial Revolution...
in the early 19th century, and the series' graphically rendered dismembered carcasses were a direct influence on Théodore Géricault
Théodore Géricault
Jean-Louis André Théodore Géricault was a profoundly influential French artist, painter and lithographer, known for The Raft of the Medusa and other paintings...
, best known for the politically charged Raft of the Medusa (1818–19). Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel
Luis Buñuel Portolés was a Spanish-born filmmaker — later a naturalized citizen of Mexico — who worked in Spain, Mexico, France and the US..-Early years:...
identified with Goya's sense of the absurd, and referenced his works in such films as the 1930 L'Âge d'Orl, on which he collaborated with Salvador Dalí, and his 1962 The Exterminating Angel.
The series' impact on Dalí is evident in Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War)
Soft Construction with Boiled Beans is a painting by Spanish Surrealist Salvador Dalí. Depicted is a grimacing dismembered figure symbolic of the Spanish state in civil war, alternately grasping upward at itself and holding itself down underfoot, a relationship morbidly prescient of Escher's...
, painted in 1936 in response to events leading to the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. 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.
In 1993, Jake and Dinos Chapman
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Iakovos "Jake" Chapman and Konstantinos "Dinos" Chapman are English visual artists, often known as the Chapman Brothers, who work together as a collaborative sibling duo...
of the Young British Artists
Young British Artists
Young British Artists or YBAs is the name given to a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London, in 1988...
movement created 82 miniature, toy-like sculptures modelled on The Disasters of War. The works were widely acclaimed and were purchased that year by the Tate
Tate
-Places:*Tate, Georgia, a town in the United States*Tate County, Mississippi, a county in the United States*Táté, the Hungarian name for Totoi village, Sântimbru Commune, Alba County, Romania*Tate, Filipino word for States...
gallery. 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
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
. 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
Age of Enlightenment
The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...
ideals to early-19th-century Spain and Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
and George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
purporting to bring democracy to Iraq.
Gallery
External links
- Series from the National Library of Spain
- Disasters Revisited: Modern Images of Atrocity and Photojournalism
- Ceán Bermúdez album from the British Museum