Sad Presentiments

Abstract

Goya completed Los Desastres de la Guerra during the Peninsular War (1808 to 1814), soon after Napoleon’s brutal occupation of Spain, which sparked a popular uprising among the Spaniards and violent repression by the French. The full title for the series was Fatales consequencias de la sangrienta guerra con Buonaparte. Y otros caprichos enfáticos en 85 estampas. Inventadas, dibuxadas, y grabadas por el pintor original D. Francisco de Goya y Lucientes. (translated: Fatal consequences of the bloody war with Buonaparte, and other emphatic inventions in 85 prints. Invented, drawn, and engraved by the original painter Francisco de Goya y Lucientes). The artist may have initially held Bonapartist sympathies, admiring the liberal vision for a more egalitarian world. Goya became thoroughly disillusioned, however, as he observed the depredations, domination, and systematized violence inflicted by the invading French as Napoleon installed his own brother on the Spanish throne.

There are very few precedents for this wrenching level of graphic depiction of war, notably the 18 etchings circa 1633 of Les Misères et les Malheurs de la Guerre (The Miseries and Misfortunes of War) of Jacques Callot, a set that was widely circulated. Goya echoes the format of Callot’s print cycle in placing text beneath graphic depictions of atrocities and executions, but Callot’s images seem remote, historic narrative, whereas Goya’s grisly scenes ard brought to the forefront, producing immediate, visceral reactions. They are impossible to look at without feeling abhorrence and revulsion, their impact undiminished even now in an era where violent, horrific, uncensored images can be transmitted virtually instantly around the world (and we see the murder of George Floyd in nearly real time).