Preparatory drawing for Disasters of War, 59, What is the use of a cup?.

In this series of prints executed between 1810 and 1814 Goya offers a critical and personal vision of the consequences of the Spanish Peninsular War (1808-14) that is remote from the propagandistic images produced by his contemporaries. Through his etchings the artist condemned the irrationality of war and the brutality of both sides, which inevitably resulted in suffering, pain and death. The series’ meaning transcends a visual presentation of a specific conflict and can be considered the first critique of war in general. Disasters of War was the title added by the Real Academia de San Fernando in 1863 for the first edition of these prints, which were not published in Goya’s lifetime.