This is What You Were Born For, plate twelve from The Disasters of War
1810/12, published 1863
Medium
Etching, lavis, drypoint and burin on ivory wove paper with gilt edges
Dimensions
Image: 12.6 × 19.1 cm (5 × 7 9/16 in.); Plate: 15.9 × 23.5 cm (6 5/16 × 9 5/16 in.); Sheet: 24 × 34 cm (9 1/2 × 13 7/16 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124855
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
In Francisco de Goya’s series The Disasters of War, 10 of the 80 etchings are devoted to piles of dead bodies, aggressively cementing this subject’s narrative importance. Goya seems to have been engrossed in the artistic possibilities that these groupings allowed. The bodies are portrayed in varied compositions and techniques—some with aquatint, some with traditional etching. Some only depict the dead (alternately naked or clothed), and others, like This Is What You Were Born For, mingle the dea...
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...