Esto es peor (This is worse), Plate 37 of “The Disasters of War”

The Spanish master of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Goya is said to be the bridge between the so-called Old Masters and masters of modern art, combining surreal or grotesque imagery with a precise yet sketchy etching technique seen earlier in the work of Rembrandt. This image, from The Disasters of War, was an open critique of the cruelly barbaric punishment that the French employed during the Napoleonic Conquests of the early nineteenth century. Following in the tradition started by Callot, Goya exposes the incredible brutality that accompanies conquest. Instead of focusing on group torture, however, Goya focuses his attention on an individual act of violence: the man’s arms have been amputated and a tree limb has pierced through his body. In showing this isolated instance of torture, Goya condemns violence in its most extreme. While Callot condemned mass violence to form his antiwar statement, Goya personalizes the violence done to the individual epitomize his pacifist critique. (“Imprint/ In Print,” curated by Nancy E. Green with assistance from Christian Waibel ’17 and presented at the Johnson Museum August 8 – December 20, 2015)