Painting
the Duke
Spanish painter Goya, celebrates the
liberation of Spain by painting
triumphant Duke.
Critics at the Royal Society have
describe the painting as speaking to us
with an urgency that no artist of our
time can muster. They are right:
Goya’s portrait and his nightmarish,
abject plates of his Disasters of War,
seem to anticipate the atrocities of
mechanised conflict that may be the
hallmark of future wars. Goya’s
etchings provide a pioneering
example of tough, first-hand war
reportage: plate 44 of the series, for
instance, is entitled “I saw it”.
It was the turbulence, hardship and
depravity
of
the
Napoleonic
occupation of Spain when Napoleon’s
brother Joseph Bonaparte was
proclaimed King, which prompted
Goya to make the series.
Goya was summoned by General
José Palafox y Melci to Zaragoza.
What Goya witnessed there provided
the starting point for the series.
The portrait of Welles by is part of an
album with a title page inscribed with
the following words: “The fatal
consequences of the Bloody War in
Spain with Bonaparte”.
It is difficult to look at the Disasters,
because Goya catalogues the
brutality a nd fatal consequences of
war in such a stark, confrontational
and unflinching manner. The series is
divided into three groups: prints of
wartime “disasters” responding to
the Napoleonic invasion of Spain; a
record of the famine in Madrid of
1811-12, in which more than 20,000
people died; and a final ‘chapter’ of
so-called
allegorical
caprichos
lampooning
the
repressive
government of Ferdinand VII, who
returned to Spain as king.