Plate 24 from ‘The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra):’ They can still be of use.’ (Aun podrán servir.)

Description

Figures strip or handle the dead in They Can Still Be of Use, giving the title’s practical wording a disturbing setting. The encounter places material usefulness beside human vulnerability, asking what remains when a person is treated chiefly as something available to others. Goya makes that question concrete through bodies and the actions performed around them.

Goya’s etching gives the question a compact human scale rather than explaining it through distant strategy. The image belongs to a series whose accumulated encounters make the costs of conflict difficult to overlook. Its strength comes from the title’s apparent practicality, a phrase that becomes disturbing when measured against the lives before the viewer and the circumstances that make such a judgment possible.

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