Plate 23 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'The Same Elsewhere' (Lo mismo en otras partes)

Art Historical Context

Plate 23, *'The Same Elsewhere'Lo mismo en otras partes, from Francisco de Goya's seminal series *The Disasters of War*Los Desastres de la Guerra captures the unrelenting horrors of the Peninsular War (18081814). Created around 1810 amid Spain's brutal resistance to Napoleon's invasion, this etching poignantly conveys that war's atrocities were not isolated but pervasive—"the same elsewhere." Goya, a master of Romanticism transitioning from court painter to unflinching social critic, documented these events with raw, unsparing realism, influencing generations of artists to confront human suffering. Printed using etching, drypoint, lavis (a form of aquatint for shadowy tones), and burin for precise lines, the modest plate (6 5/16 × 9 7/16 in.) achieves haunting depth and texture. Tags evoking corpses, men, and death suggest a grim tableau of fallen bodies, rendered with Goya's signature economy to evoke universal despair rather than glorify battle. Published posthumously in 1863 and now in The Metropolitan Museum of Art's Drawings and Prints collection (purchased via the Jacob H. Schiff Bequest in 1922), this work endures as a powerful anti-war testament. Goya's innovative print techniques democratized his message, making *The Disasters* a cornerstone of graphic art's role in bearing witness to history's darkest chapters.

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 ...