Plate 64  from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)

Plate 64 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes)

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This is the last in a group of prints Goya devoted to Madrid’s 1811–12 famine—a result of failed crops, abandoned fields, and interrupted food supply lines—during which an estimated 15 percent of the city’s population died. Offsetting the generic anonymity suggested by the piling up and mass disposal of bodies, Goya sought to preserve the dignity of the individual in this print. He relied on time-honored models for representing the principal figure; the detail of her dangling arm is a common trope in the Christian tradition that recurs in scenes of the Passion of Christ.


Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Plate 64  from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)Plate 64  from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)Plate 64  from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)Plate 64  from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)Plate 64  from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'Cartloads to the cemetery' (Carretadas al cementerio)

The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.