- Cronología
- Ca. 1820 - 1823
- Dimensiones
- 179 x 220 mm
- Técnica y soporte
- Etching
- Reconocimiento de la autoría de Goya
- Undisputed work
- Ficha: realización/revisión
- 03 Jan 2011 / 05 Jun 2023
- Inventario
- 225
See Sad forebodings of what is to come.
The title of the print was handwritten by Goya on the first and only series known to us at the time of its production, which the painter gave to his friend Agustín Ceán Bermúdez. Thus the title was subsequently engraved on the plate without any modification from Ceán Bermúdez's copy for the first edition of the Disasters of War published by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid in 1863.
In one corner of the verso of the folio on which the first proof of state is stamped is a sanguine drawing of the decoration of the Order of Bath, possibly made by Goya for the equestrian portrait of the Duke of Wellington.
A man, perhaps a corpse, in the foreground, projected slightly foreshortened, is hovering over a group of bats flying towards him. One of them perches on his chest and sucks his torso to feed on the blood.
This engraving should be considered a continuation of the previous one, no. 71, Against the General Good. What is happening in this print is probably the result, symbolically represented, of the measures that the bat-eared scribe is writing. He could be writing the text on the taxes, perhaps ecclesiastical, which continued to increase the poverty of a society that was in abject poverty after the War of Independence.
One of the visual sources used by Goya for this engraving could be the painting by Peter Paul Rubens (Siegen, 1577-Antwerp, 1640) Saturn eating his children (1678, Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid). The Aragonese painter 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 state that devours its own people by forcing them to pay heavy taxes without any kind of mercy. The engraving The Results is also clearly reminiscent of the print The Nightmare by Edmund Burke (Dublin, 1729-Beaconsfield, 1797), which later inspired both Nikolai Abraham Abilgaard (Copenhagen, 1743-Frederikstal, 1809) and Johann Heinrich Fusli (Zurich, 1741-Putney Hill, London, 1825).
The plate is in the National Chalcography (cat. 323).
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Goya. Das Zeitalter der Revolucionen. Kunst um 1800 (1980 – 1981)Hamburger KunsthalleHamburg1980cat. 11
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Goya y el espíritu de la IlustraciónMuseo Nacional del PradoMadrid1988from October 6th to December 18th 1988. Exhibited also at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, January 18th to March 26th 1989; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nueva York, May 9th to July 16th 1989, Madrid curator Manuela B. Mena Marqués, scientific directors Alfonso E. Pérez Sánchez and Eleanor A. Sayrecat. 158
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Francisco de GoyaMuseo d'Arte ModernaLugano1996exhibition celebrated from September 22nd to November 17th.p.189, cat. 72
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Francisco Goya. Sein leben im spiegel der graphik. Fuendetodos 1746-1828 Bordeaux. 1746-1996Galerie KornfeldBern1996from November 21st 1996 to January 1997cat. 162
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Francisco Goya. Capricci, follie e disastri della guerraSan Donato Milanese2000Opere grafiche della Fondazione Antonio Mazzottacat. 152
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Goya et la modernitéPinacothèque de ParisParís2013from October 11st 2013 to March 16th 2014cat. 111
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Goya: Order and disorderMuseum of Fine ArtsBoston2014cat. 201
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Goya, grabadorMadridBlass S.A.1918cat. 174
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Goya engravings and lithographs, vol. I y II.OxfordBruno Cassirer1964cat. 192
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Vie et ouvre de Francisco de GoyaParísOffice du livre1970cat. 1118
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A solution to the enigma of Goya’s emphatic caprices nº 65-80 of The Disasters of WarApollo1978pp.186-191
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Goya y el espíritu de la IlustraciónMadridMuseo del Prado1988pp.441-443, cat. 158
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Catálogo de las estampas de Goya en la Biblioteca NacionalMadridMinisterio de Educación y Cultura, Biblioteca Nacional1996cat. 291
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Francisco de Goya. Los Desastres de la guerraBarcelonaLa Central2011pp.44-45
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ParísPinacoteca de París2013p. 155
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Goya: Order & DisorderBostonMuseum of Fine Arts Boston Publications2014p. 293
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Goya. In the Norton Simon MuseumPasadenaNorton Simon Museum2016pp. 114-151