3-101-581 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

Las resultas, (The consequences/results), Plate 72, "Los Desastres de la Guerra", c1810, (published 1863). A giant bat perches on the chest of a man, perhaps a corpse, and sucks his blood. One of the sources for this engraving could be the painting by Peter Paul Rubens, 'Saturn eating his children', (1678). Goya took up this theme again a few years later ('Saturn eating a son'). The image of a father devouring his children could be an appropriate metaphor for a merciless state that devours its own people by forcing them to pay heavy taxes. 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].