Plate 44 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'I saw it' (Yo lo vi)
Medium
Etching, drypoint, burin
Dimensions
Plate: 6 1/4 × 9 3/16 in. (15.8 × 23.4 cm) Sheet: 8 3/4 × 12 5/8 in. (22.2 × 32 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1932
Accession Number
32.62.2
Tags
Art Historical Context
Francisco de Goya y Luc, a pioneering Spanish artist of the late 18th and early th centuries, created *Plate 44: 'I saw it' (Yo lo vi)* in 1810 as part of his monumental series *The Disasters of War*Los Desastres de la). This etching captures the raw horrors of the Peninsular War (18081814), Spain's brutal fight for independence against Napoleon's invading French forces. Goya, who witnessed the atrocities firsthand, used the stark title—"I saw it"—to underscore his role as an unflinching eyewitness to war's inhumanity, blending Romantic intensity with emerging realism. Printed in etching, dry...
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 ...