Plate 2 from ‘The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra): ‘Rightly or wrongly.’ (Con razon ó sin ella.)

Description

In Rightly or wrongly, soldiers direct their bayonets toward civilians in a confrontation whose closeness gives every gesture urgency. Francisco Goya’s Rightly or Wrongly places a deliberately unsettled judgment beneath the action. The scene presents violence in progress, making the question of justification difficult to separate from the bodies that must endure it.

Made in 1810 and published in 1863, plate 2 of The Disasters of War uses etching and tonal work to distinguish the opposing groups without turning them into a reassuring tableau of heroes and enemies. Goya’s caption refuses an easy moral conclusion. The print’s force lies in the human consequences of a claim to right, showing how arguments about legitimacy can coexist with an encounter in which weapons, fear and resistance have become the immediate facts.

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