Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) (1746-1828)

A Spanish painter, Goya was born in Aragon. In 1789 he became court painter to the young Spanish king Charles IV (1784-1819; r. 1788-1808), a position he retained when Spain came under the rule of Napoleon’s brother, Joseph Bonaparte (1768-1844; r. 1808-1816). Although sympathetic to some of the Bonaparte regime’s liberal reforms, Goya had a keen sense of nationhood and an abhorrence of the violence used by the French to suppress the guerrilla uprisings protesting their rule. His sympathy for the Spanish cause is clear from his 1814 painting The Third of May. Between 1810 and 1814 he executed sixty-five etchings, collected under the title Los Desastres de la Guerra (The Disasters of War), showing all manner of atrocities, including limbs hanging from trees and monstrous figures greedily devouring human flesh. Goya’s etchings can be considered true antiwar propaganda, opening the way for future artists to represent the horrors of war.