3-100-740 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Aun podrán servir, (They can still be of use), Plate 24, "Los Desastres de la Guerra", c1810, (published 1863). Tending to them so that they might serve again. The wounded are being carried or stretchered in an open field on the outskirts of a village, the ground strewn with sabres and rifles. Both the wounded and the stretcher-bearers appear to be villagers from the hamlet visible on the horizon, marked by its parish church's truncated bell tower. This print captures the suffering and the goodwill of these makeshift stretcher-bearers and medics. These wounded men, too, will go on to sustain the resistance. Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates (between 1810 and 1815), art historians see them as a visual protest against the violence of the 1808 Dos de Mayo Uprising, the subsequent cruel war that ended in Spanish victory in the Peninsular War of 1808-1814, and the setbacks to the liberal cause following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. From "Los Desastres de la Guerra: colección de ochenta láminas inventadas y grabadas al agua fuerte por Don Francisco de Goya", (The Disasters of War: collection of eighty plates made and etched by Don Francisco de Goya), [Madrid, 1863].