Plate 30 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Ravages of War' (Estragos de la guerra)
Medium
Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher
Dimensions
Plate: 5 1/2 × 6 11/16 in. (14 × 17 cm) Sheet: 12 3/8 x 8 1/2 in. (31.5 x 21.6 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932
Accession Number
32.62.5
Tags
Art Historical Context
Step into the harrowing world of Francisco de Goya y Lucientes with *Plate 30: Ravages of War (Estragos de la guerra)* from his seminal series *The Disasters of War*, created in 1810. This etching, housed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints department (Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932), measures a modest plate size of 5½ × 6⅝ inches, yet packs an immense emotional punch. Goya, a master of Romanticism transitioning to stark realism, documented the brutal realities of the Peninsular War (1808–1814), Spain's fight against Napoleonic invasion, through 82 unflinching prints never...
About the Artist
Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) · 1746–1828
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker considered the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns. Rising from modest provincial origins to become First Court Painter to Charles IV, Goya's career spanned the Enlightenment's optimism and the brutal Napoleonic invasion that shattered it. A mysterious illness in 1793 left him permanently deaf and ...