And they are like wild beasts, plate five from The Disasters of War
Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (Spanish, 1746-1828)
1812/15, published 1863
- Medium
- Etching, burnished aquatint, and drypoint on ivory wove paper with gilt edges
- Classification
- Dimensions
- Image: 13.4 × 18.3 cm (5 5/16 × 7 1/4 in.); Plate: 15.5 × 20.8 cm (6 1/8 × 8 1/4 in.); Sheet: 24 × 33.8 cm (9 1/2 × 13 5/16 in.)
- Culture
- Spain
- Museum
- Art Institute of Chicago, Prints and Drawings
- Credit line
- Gift of J. C. Cebrian
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Art Institute of Chicago
About this work
Even mothers are driven to violence, as this image depicts. A woman holds a child on her left hip, even as she thrusts a spear into a French soldier with her right arm. In the background, other women assault the enemy by various means or languish from their wounds. The striking juxtaposition of the maternal with violent aggression serves to communicate the desperate conditions of the Peninsular War.
Description © Art Institute of Chicago, CC BY 4.0
