Plate 70 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'They do not know the way' (No saben el camino)
1814–15 (published 1863)
Medium
Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher
Dimensions
Plate: 6 7/8 × 8 1/2 in. (17.5 × 21.6 cm) Sheet: 9 3/4 × 13 9/16 in. (24.8 × 34.4 cm)
Classification
Prints
Department
Drawings and Prints
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Jacob H. Schiff Bequest, 1922
Accession Number
22.60.25(70)
Tags
Art Historical Context
In Francisco de Goya's monumental series *The Disasters of War*Los Desastres de la Guerra), Plate 70, titled *'They do not know way'* (No saben el camino), captures the raw anguish of the Peninsular War (180814). Created between 1814 and 1815 amid Spain's brutal fight against Napoleon's invasion, these etchings document the unsparing horrors of conflict—famine, violence, and human suffering. Goya, a pioneering Romantic artist, abandoned heroic ideals for stark realism, critiquing war's futility through unflinching imagery. Though printed in his lifetime, the full series was published posthumou...
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 ...