And they are like wild beasts, plate five from The Disasters of War
1812/15, published 1863
Medium
Etching, burnished aquatint, and drypoint on ivory wove paper with gilt edges
Dimensions
Image: 13.4 × 18.3 cm (5 5/16 × 7 1/4 in.); Plate: 15.5 × 20.8 cm (6 1/8 × 8 1/4 in.); Sheet: 24 × 33.8 cm (9 1/2 × 13 5/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124843
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
Even mothers are driven to violence, as this image depicts. A woman holds a child on her left hip, even as she thrusts a spear into a French soldier with her right arm. In the background, other women assault the enemy by various means or languish from their wounds. The striking juxtaposition of the maternal with violent aggression serves to communicate the desperate conditions of the Peninsular War.
About the Artist
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes was born on March 30, 1746, in the small Aragonese village of Fuendetodos, Spain, to José Benito de Goya, a master gilder, and Gracia de Lucientes. The fourth of six children in a modest lower-middle-class family, Goya received a basic education before beginning his artistic training at age 14 under the local painter José Luzán y Martínez in Zaragoza, where he sp...