Cartloads to the cemetery, plate 64 from The Disasters of War
1812/15, published 1863
Medium
Etching, aquatint and drypoint in warm black on off-white wove paper with gilt edges
Dimensions
Image: 12.9 × 18.1 cm (5 1/8 × 7 3/16 in.); Plate: 15.3 × 20.5 cm (6 1/16 × 8 1/8 in.); Sheet: 24 × 33.9 cm (9 1/2 × 13 3/8 in.)
Classification
etching
Department
Prints and Drawings
Museum
Art Institute of Chicago
Accession Number
124917
Rights
Public Domain
About this artwork
The prints in Goya’s Disasters of War, one of the artist’s bleakest series, protest the treatment of civilians during the long Spanish conflict with France, particularly demonstrating the toll on women. The unceremonious manhandling of a female casualty of war makes a troubling focal point for this particularly dark image. The anonymous woman’s dangling white limbs and displaced skirts suggest she may have suffered rape in addition to the other acts of violence that caused her death.
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...