3-101-583 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Esto es lo peor!, (This is the worst!), Plate 74, "Los Desastres de la Guerra", c1810, (published 1863). A wolf (or a fox), writes on a parchment: Misera humanidad la culpa es tuya. Casti. (Wretched humanity, the fault is yours. Casti). A kneeling friar holds the inkwell, and behind is a group of people with emaciated faces. The scene is inspired by Giambattista Casti's "Gli animali parlanti" (Talking Animals, 1801). In Casti's text, the prime minister in charge of starting the war is a fox. Although Goya did not make known his intention when creating the plates (made 1810-1815), 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. The prints were not published until 35 years after Goya's death, probably because only then was it considered politically safe to do so. 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].