Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)

Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is among the most blatant representations in the Disasters of the wartime aggression inflicted upon women. This form of wanton violence seems particularly to have touched Goya, as it became the subject of eight plates in the series. Here, a group of French soldiers assaults a Spanish woman watched by a man standing on the left with his hands tied, in all certainty a relative of the victim. Goya etched this print on the back of the plate for Landscape (see 2015.539).

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)Plate 13 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Bitter to be Present' (Amarga presencia)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.