Teach with Collections: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes, Tampoco (Nor this time)

Following the French invasion of northern Spain in the spring of 1808, the Peninsular War subjected the Spanish people to six years of cruelty, terror, and extreme privation. Grief-stricken, Goya undoubtedly began work on his Disasters of War etchings following the siege and ultimate capture of his boyhood city of Zaragoza from December 1808 through February 1809‚—a notoriously brutal battle in which some 50,000 Spaniards died. By 1814, Goya had completed fifty-six of the eighty plates he ultimately created for Disasters of War, but in the repressive political climate that followed the reinstatement of absolutist monarchy under Ferdinand VII, the series remained unpublished during the artist's lifetime. Ultimately, the plates were acquired by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in 1863, when they were published for the first time.

Conversation prompts:

Compare the viewer's gaze in looking at this work and the soldier's gaze directed toward the hanging man. Is the viewer's gaze voyeuristic? Why or why not? Does this representation of human suffering cause an embodied experience for the viewer? If so, through which details?

Goya's Disasters of War etchings have been described as laying the groundwork for later iconic representations of war, including Picasso's Guernica and documentary war photographs. Which stylistic elements in Goya's composition might be described as shockingly modern?