Francisco de Goya

Datos Generales
Cronología
Ca. 1820 - 1823
Dimensiones
179 x 220 mm
Técnica y soporte
Etching
Reconocimiento de la autoría de Goya
Undisputed work
Ficha: realización/revisión
03 Jan 2011 / 05 Jun 2023
Inventario
225
Historia

See Sad forebodings of what is to come.

The title of the print was handwritten by Goya on the first and only series known to us at the time of its production, which the painter gave to his friend Agustín Ceán Bermúdez. Thus the title was subsequently engraved on the plate without any modification from Ceán Bermúdez's copy for the first edition of the Disasters of War published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in 1863.

In one corner of the verso of the folio on which the first proof of state is stamped is a sanguine drawing of the decoration of the Order of Bath, possibly made by Goya for the equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington.

Análisis artístico

A man, perhaps a corpse, in the foreground, projected slightly foreshortened, is hovering over a group of bats flying towards him. One of them perches on his chest and sucks his torso to feed on the blood. 

This engraving should be considered a continuation of the previous one, no. 71, Against the General Good. What is happening in this print is probably the result, symbolically represented, of the measures that the bat-eared scribe is writing. He could be writing the text on the taxes, perhaps ecclesiastical, which continued to increase the poverty of a society that was in abject poverty after the War of Independence.

One of the visual sources used by Goya for this engraving could be the painting by Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen, 1577-Antwerp, 1640) Saturn eating his children (1678, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). The Aragonese painter took up this theme again a few years later (Saturn eating a son). The image of a father devouring his children could be an appropriate metaphor for a state that devours its own people by forcing them to pay heavy taxes without any kind of mercy. The engraving The Results is also clearly reminiscent of the print The Nightmare by Edmund Burke (Dublin, 1729-Beaconsfield, 1797), which later inspired both Nikolai Abraham Abilgaard (Copenhagen, 1743-Frederikstal, 1809) and Johann Heinrich Fusli (Zurich, 1741-Putney Hill, London, 1825).

Conservación

The plate is in the National Chalcography (cat. 323).

Exposiciones
  • Goya. Das Zeitalter der Revolucionen. Kunst um 1800 (1980 – 1981)
    Hamburger Kunsthalle
    Hamburg
    1980
  • Goya y el espíritu de la Ilustración
    Museo Nacional del Prado
    Madrid
    1988
    from October 6th to December 18th 1988. Exhibited also at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, January 18th to March 26th 1989; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nueva York, May 9th to July 16th 1989, Madrid curator Manuela B. Mena Marqués, scientific directors Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Eleanor A. Sayre
  • Francisco de Goya
    Museo d'Arte Moderna
    Lugano
    1996
    exhibition celebrated from September 22nd to November 17th.
  • Francisco Goya. Sein leben im spiegel der graphik. Fuendetodos 1746-1828 Bordeaux. 1746-1996
    Galerie Kornfeld
    Bern
    1996
    from November 21st 1996 to January 1997
  • Francisco Goya. Capricci, follie e disastri della guerra
    San Donato Milanese
    2000
    Opere grafiche della Fondazione Antonio Mazzotta
  • Goya et la modernité
    Pinacothèque de Paris
    París
    2013
    from October 11st 2013 to March 16th 2014
  • Goya: Order and disorder
    Museum of Fine Arts
    Boston
    2014
Bibliografía
  • BERUETE Y MONET, Aureliano de
    Goya, grabador
    Bibliography']['number
    MadridBlass S.A.
    1918
    cat. 174
  • HARRIS, Tomás
    Goya engravings and lithographs, vol. I y II.
    Bibliography']['number
    OxfordBruno Cassirer
    1964
    cat. 192
  • GASSIER, Pierre y WILSON, Juliet
    Vie et ouvre de Francisco de Goya
    Bibliography']['number
    ParísOffice du livre
    1970
    cat. 1118
  • GLENDINNING, Nigel
    A solution to the enigma of Goya’s emphatic caprices nº 65-80 of The Disasters of War
    Apollo
    Bibliography']['number
    1978
    pp.186-191
  • PÉREZ SÁNCHEZ, Alfonso E. y SAYRE, Eleanor A. (directores) and MENA, Manuela B. (comisaria)
    Goya y el espíritu de la Ilustración
    Bibliography']['number
    MadridMuseo del Prado
    1988
    pp.441-443, cat. 158
  • SANTIAGO, Elena M. (coordinadora)
    Catálogo de las estampas de Goya en la Biblioteca Nacional
    Bibliography']['number
    MadridMinisterio de Educación y Cultura, Biblioteca Nacional
    1996
    cat. 291
  • GALLEGO GARCÍA, Raquel
    Francisco de Goya. Los Desastres de la guerra
    Bibliography']['number
    BarcelonaLa Central
    2011
    pp.44-45
  • OROPESA, Marisa and RINCÓN GARCÍA, Wilfredo
    Bibliography']['number
    ParísPinacoteca de París
    2013
    p. 155
  • ILCHMAN, Frederick y STEPANEK, Stephanie L. (comisarios)
    Goya: Order & Disorder
    Bibliography']['number
    BostonMuseum of Fine Arts Boston Publications
    2014
    p. 293
  • WILSON BAREAU, Juliet
    Goya. In the Norton Simon Museum
    Bibliography']['number
    PasadenaNorton Simon Museum
    2016
    pp. 114-151
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