The Disasters of War

The Disasters of War is a series of 82 etchings and aquatints made by Francisco Goya between about 1810 and 1820, though the prints were not published until 1863, thirty-five years after his death. The images fall into three groups: scenes of violence against soldiers and civilians during the Peninsular War against Napoleon's occupation, the devastating famine that struck Madrid in 1811 and 1812, and allegorical prints criticizing the restored Bourbon monarchy and the church's resistance to liberal reform. Rejecting the heroic conventions of earlier war art in favor of unflinching depictions of atrocity and suffering, the series is considered one of the foundational works of anti-war art in the Western tradition.