Plate 56 from 'The Disasters of War' (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'To the cemetery.'(Al cementerio.)
Medium
Etching, lavis, drypoint
Dimensions
Plate: 6 1/16 × 8 1/16 in. (15.4 × 20.5 cm) Sheet: 8 11/16 × 12 1/8 in. (22 × 30.8 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1953
Accession Number
53.541
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the harrowing series *The Disasters of War*Los Desastres de la Guerra created by Francisco de Goya between 1810 and 1811, Plate 56 titled *To the Cemetery* (Al cementerio captures the grim aftermath of the Peninsular. This conflict, sparked by Napoleon's invasion of in 1808, widespread brutality that Goya witnessed firsthand as a court painter. His 82 etchings unflinchingly document the atrocities, blending eyewitness realism with profound moral outrage—a stark departure from the idealized art of his time. Rendered in etching, lavis (a soft-ground etching technique for tonal washes), and d...
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 ...