Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746–1828) 
Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War): What Use is a Cup?, 1863  
Etching, burnished aquatint, lavis, drypoint, burin and burnisher on wove paper; First edition 
The Norton Simon Foundation, F.1968.03.59.G

Goya witnessed the devastation of Napoleon’s invasion of Spain in the early 19th century, and he recorded it in a series of prints known as the Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War). Unlike other images produced at that time, Goya did not depict celebrated war heroes, but rather the experiences of everyday Spanish people. The prints numbered 48–64 deal with the famine of 1811–12, caused by a French food blockade, during which 20,000 people died of starvation in Madrid.

The two images shown here capture profound hunger and thirst. In the first, a woman hopelessly offers a drink to her dying companion, who is surrounded by the bodies of children in a static gray landscape. In the second, a group huddles around a murky pot of porridge made from millet—a grain associated with the very poor—served by a woman lying in the street. Millet had long been cultivated as a dietary staple in Europe, but by the 19th century it was primarily used for animal feed, having been replaced by wheat and corn. Goya’s inclusion of millet suggests that this meager shared meal is a last resort for the emaciated group.

The Desastres series was groundbreaking in its subject matter as well as its artistic manufacture. For the first time in Spain, Goya employed a technique known as lavis, in which acid is left to sit on a metal plate to create subtle variations in tone that produce the moody, oppressive atmosphere dominating the group of famine etchings. The unflinching Desastres prints remained controversial after the war and were not published until 1863, nearly 35 years after Goya’s death.