Review of Francisco Goya’s Disasters of War
Goya’s long career stretched from the rose-colored rococo of the illustrated reign of Carlos III through the portraits of Carlos IV, MarÃ?Âa Luisa, and Godoy, and finally into the post-Napoleonic bleakness and reactionary darkness reflected as dull horror in the “Disasters of War” and the “black paintings.” In 1808, Francisco Goya was 62 years old and had become deaf from a mysterious illness, “the deaf Goya looked around him and saw in the silent mouthing and gesticulations something grotesque and/evolving” (Clark 75). He was a respected and successful court painter. His work ranged from striking tapestry to powerful etchings (Singer 42). Goya’s collection, “The Disasters of War,” (published in 1863, 30 years after his death), is an indictment of war and the atrocities carried out during the battles.
The occupation of Spain was ordered by Napoleon Bonapart, who rose during the revolution that rid France of its king and queen. Napoleon crowned himself emperor in 1804. Napoleon forced the Spanish royal family into exile and in 1808 put his brother, Joseph, on the throne. The emphasis on the assertion of natural rights against tyranny involved assigning a major role to the political ideas of the Enlightenment as a cause of revolution. The writings of Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Rousseau were held to be at the root of the revolutionary movement. Though far from being unanimously held when the first Spanish American revolts occurred in the wake of Napoleon’s invasion of the Peninsula in 1808, this view was already clearly manifest in the propaganda of the Hidalgo revolt of 1810 in New Spain and the uprisings in northern South America (Muhlberter 34-36).
The beginning of the revolutions in southern South America were the result of a constitutional crisis in the empire in which the idea of independence had no place at all. Spaniards in America claimed, in view of the captivity of the monarch, Ferdinand VII, the right to the autonomous pursuit of the cause of resistance to Napoleon, just as the nationalists in Spain itself did. Scenes from the six-year rebellion, the War of Independence, or Peninsular War, were captured by Goya. The drawings, which began in 1810, progressed through the Napoleonic invasion to the Fernandine liberation in 1814. There are seventy-three sanguine and china ink drawings, which form the basis for eighty-two etchings and aquatints (Hull 154).
Goya’s attitude towards the war was mixed. He loved Spain and its people as portrayed in much of his work. He also was an admirer of the French Enlightenment, and like many others, felt that French rule might be superior to the inadequate rule of Charles IV or Ferdinand. Because he lived the life of the court, he was aware of the effects of the bad government in Spain (Singer 42). He was a liberal by instinct, a man of progressive ideas, and receptive to the ideas of revolutionary France and what Napoleon stood for, he welcomed the invaders (The Life and Times of Goya 72). But he was not satisfied with what he observed. He witnessed the brutality of war inflicted by both sides. He was on the side of humanity, reason, and peace. In an abstract position, he was an individual who lived in an ideal world of his own with the barrier of deafness. He saw the future as well as the present. His art was not focused on politics but on history. He bitterly and bravely observed the effects of war on his country, capturing the suffering and devastation. According to Anthony Hull, in Goya: Man Among Kings,
Yet for Goya the soldier himself, regardless of side, became the omnipresent symbol of evil. In the darkness of destruction all around there is a haunting power in the pulsating figures he drew, whose angular postures belong to perpetrator and victim alike. It was as if he were a close impartial witness to a universal tragedy. And it was to tell men eternally not be barbarians that he drew them (137).
Goya painted war realistically, capturing isolated acts of heroism, and gruesome, brutal attacks. He traveled throughout Spain sketching what he saw and felt. From 1810 to 1820, Goya painted 80 prints that were a part of “Disasters of War.” During the Penisular War, the French and the Spaniards tortured and mutilated their prisoners, subjecting them to long agonizing deaths. In the sketch, Que Valor! (What Courage!), Goya shows an act of heroism of a young woman of Aragon named Augustine. She is firing a cannon after the male gunners have been killed. This heroine fought beside the soldiers during the French siege of Saragossa (Schickel 138).
The Ni Por Esas (And nor do these), is set against the background of a church. A Spanish mother is dragged away by a French soldier who leaves her baby crying on the ground (Schickel 138). Behind them, a soldier holds a protesting woman as people crouch and slump in the shadows. Goya’s eyewitness account of the war, showed that war is a catastrophe. It causes suffering and degradation. The War imposed itself upon Goya, “It was irresistible, something so perfectly suited to his talent as to be unavoidable” (Schickel 153).
The women of Spain were often defenseless against the French soldiers and were victims of assault and rape. In No quieren (They do not want to), Goya’s stark etching shows a soldier attacking a girl, as an elderly woman with a dagger comes to her defense. In his sketches of horror, Goya also reveals acts of compassion (Schickel 139).
In Enterrar y callar (Bury them and be silent), Goya shows the dark side of the glories of war. Naked corpses and left unburied on a hill and are witnessed by two of the survivors who look at the sight in disgust (Schickel 139). One story about Goya tells of his servant asking him, “Why do you paint these barbarities that men commit?” Goya’s answer was, “To tell men forever that they should not be barbarians” (Schickel 152).
The Spaniards were resentful of the French’s presence in their land and were revengeful. In Populacho (The populace), Goya showed how the bodies of wounded French solders were subject to savage indignities while the Spaniard citizens watched with approval (Schickel 139). Even though he was not a soldier, Goya was thrust into the War, “Destruction beckoned from both the past and the figure, constraining him as by a rite to consecrate more of its images to art.” (Hull, 153)
The French and anti-clerical Spaniards destroyed many monasteries, and raped the nuns. Goya’s sketch of this scene, Tambien esto (And this too) is a sequel to “Everything has gone wrong” (Schickel 140). Goya’s graphic vision of war, “like his paintings, was once more terrible to behold-a warning to himself, an expiation, a private gift, a torment of the mind, things unseeable, things to be withheld from the world because the world could not live by terror for long.” (Hull, 154).
A mutilation of corpses was captured in Grande bazana! Con muertos! (Wonderful heroism! Against dead men!). In this sketch, the mutiliated bodies hang on a trees like ornaments, illustrating man’s ferocity (Schickel 141).
Churchmen and peasants kneel before a wolf in Esto es lo peor! (That is the worst of it!). The wolf writes, “Wretched humanity, the fault is yours.” This sketch reflects the outrage and disillusionment of the Spanish people after the terrible war. After the war, all that Spain had gained was a king who was more oppressive and insensitive than the old ruler, Charles IV (Schickel 141). Many Spaniards believed that truth was dead. In Murio la verdad (Truth is dead)), Goya depicts Truth’s funeral, presided over by a cleric, Justice who hides her eyes in the shadows. In a continuation of the funeral scene, Si resucitara? (Will she rise again?), the creatures of night stand by, and Truth’s dying light comes through their dark world, possibly giving hope to the hopeless (Schickel 142, 143). Goya’s sketch poses the question of whether a new spirit of reason can rise from the ashes of war.
Goya’s images, in their final form, and his creative processes are linked together For example, Goya’s familiarity with types of imagery led him to use animals and monsters comparably for his purposes. In plate 73, “Feline pantomime,” a crouching cat is attached at the mouth to a flying owl, while a hooded monk bows to them reverently in a scene of crafty royal powers renewed under the adulation of owlish but evil counselors (Hull, 157; Schickel 150-51).
The final etching in the series is Esto es lo verdadero (This is the truth). Goya shows a full-breasted Truth talking to a bearded old farmer, possibly suggesting that Spain’s ravaged lands may flourish again (Schickel 143).
The events that Goya witnessed at such close range and with such emotion made him feel isolated. His aloofness was not due to any lack of patriotism, “It was precisely because of his love of Spain that he felt so much deep wound. His love of peace, his essential neutrality-as if he were looking at the world through a neutral-colored lens-meant aversion to all the cruelties committed in patriotism’s name. (Hull, 154). When he painted for himself, he occasionally reverted to peaceful scenes of the everyday life of the people he liked (The Life and Times of Goya 66). It was a form of escape for him.
Goya’s paintings and sketches consisted of majos and majas, toreros, witches, martyrs and heroes, religious processions, superstitions, festivals and feasts, in short the whole world of the pueblo. The “Disasters of War” series are not just powerful in what Goya showed: Napoleonic troops butchering Spanish civilians, with castrations, impalements, and dismemberments. The cruel assassins in the War were the same French that Goya admired all his life. Language was no means of expression to him in his deaf world. The titles of the plates in the series are short, inarticulate grunts (“The Same Thing” or “I Saw It) (“What War Is” 98). Goya reminds the viewer of this series that war is essentially about people doing terrible things to other people’s bodies. Goya was emotionally affected by the war and reminds others, through this series, of the horrible reality of war.
Works Cited
Clark, K. The Romantic Rebellion. New York: Harper & Row, 1973.
Hull, Anthony. Goya: Man Among Kings. New York: Hamilton Press, 1987.
The Life and Times of Goya. Philadelphia: Curtis Books, 1966.
Muhlberger, Richard. What Makes a Goya a Goya? New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1994.
Schickel, Richard. The World of Goya 1746-1828. New York: Time-Life Books, 1971.
Singer, Matthew. “First Painter to the Spanish Court.” USA Today 127 (May 1999): 42-47.
“What War Is.” Economist 317 (October 1990): 98.
