Plate 43 from ‘The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra): ‘This too.’ (Tambien esto.)

Description

Francisco Goya’s This Too follows a group of robed figures moving away from the viewer. Their backs and bundled shapes create a compact procession, while other people gather farther off near a rising landscape. Seen from behind, the travelers seem less like individual portraits than a community forced into motion. Their movement carries the image outward toward an uncertain destination.

Plate 43 of The Disasters of War continues the series’ scenes of flight and disruption. The short title refuses to treat this departure as separate from the other consequences of conflict. Goya gives the familiar forms of religious dress an unfamiliar setting, suggesting the loss of institutional shelter. Rather than identifying a single historical incident as certain, the image conveys displacement through the direction, grouping and reduced individuality of the retreating figures.

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