Plate 65 from ‘The Disasters of War’ (Los Desastres de la Guerra): ‘What is this hubbub?’ (Qué alboroto es este?)

Description

Francisco Goya’s What Is This Hubbub? brings distressed women before an officer interrupted in the act of writing. Dogs press toward them, while more figures gather behind in an unsettled crowd. One woman’s pale clothing stands out sharply against the darker neighboring forms. Their lifted hands and wind-tossed gestures make the scene feel urgent, but the official’s response remains uncertain.

Plate 65 of The Disasters of War marks a transition toward the series’ more symbolic final images. Goya gives administrative activity and public distress the same confined space, asking how those who exercise authority attend to suffering around them. The title can sound dismissive, reducing an urgent human disturbance to mere noise. Rather than fixing a single historical incident, the print preserves that tense relation between an official’s work and the people affected by it.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Goya collection.