The Truth Died

In the foreground on the ground lies a bare-breasted female figure, which could be an allegory of Truth, as the title suggests, from which rays of light emanate. She is surrounded by several people attending her burial; a bishop seems to be officiating and monks with shovels are preparing to bury the body. On the left is the allegory of Justice, holding the scales with one hand and covering her face with the other in mourning; she is the saddest figure in this scene.

This is not the first time that Goya refers to the allegory of Justice in the series of The Disasters of War, as it is also found in engraving no. 69, Nothing. This will tell us that in his first state proof its presence was quite clear.

In some cases it has been suggested that the woman being buried could be the Constitution, wearing a laurel wreath alluding to her victory. The rays she emanates indicate that she could still be alive and that she is resisting burial. In this way, as Jesusa Vega points out, Goya's image could be an illustration of the events that took place in Madrid that have been described in the Manifesto of everything that happened in Madrid on the occasion of the King's Decree of 4 May: namely the abrogation of the Constitution, the solemnity with which the tombstone of that name in the Plaza Mayor was dragged, the burning in the same square of the statue of Liberty; and also a compilation of the functions that took place in Madrid on the occasion of the entry of our august Monarch Ferdinand VII, published in the Madrid printing house of the Viuda de Vallín in 1814. In addition, the décima A la caída de la Constitución y muerte de los liberales On the Fall of the Constitution and the Death of the Liberals was distributed on flyleaves.

Another possible source of inspiration for engraving no. 79 is, as Nigel Glendinning suggests, the work of Giambattista Casti (Viterbo or Acquapendente, 1724-Paris, 1803) Gli animali parlanti (1801). The historian believes that Truth Died may have to do with Canto XIV, in which Justice and Truth disappear from the earth.

This image has some parallels with several pages in Notebook C, especially with C.117 Lux Ex Tenebris. In it, Goya wanted to show that, despite the absolutists' attempts to bury the Constitution, it, with its glowing body, augurs its imminent resurrection.

The somewhat hermetic nature of most of the prints in the Emphatic Caprices makes their identification rather complex. In many cases, as in Died the Truth, it could be thought that Goya condenses several ideas into a single print, drawing on various sources of inspiration.