Estragos de la Guerra (Ravages of war),

1808/09–12, printed 1863

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political climate that followed the reinstatement of absolutist monarchy under Ferdinand VII, the series remained unpublished in the artist’s lifetime.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.