Heidi Herrera, Brigham Young University
Remarkable in both subject and execution, Los Desastres de la Guerra (Disasters of War) is exceptional in Goya’s oeuvre and in artistic representations of wartime rape. Filled with scenes illustrating the consequences and violence of war, Goya offers an insightful yet ambiguous commentary, particularly in the plates in which rape is presented as a first-hand account; plate 9, No quieren—“They don’t want it”—, plate 10, Tampoco—“Nor do these”— and plate 11, Ni por ésas—“Nor those.” Indicting the French soldiers for the rape of women during the French occupation, the Disasters of War offers offering a brutal and deceptively truthful view on the inevitable and horrible consequences which war and looting wage on women, transforming both viewer and artist into witnesses of the gruesome scenes, implicating both as detached, though unwitting, participants in the sexual violence enacted against these women; the artist in his creation of these rapes and the viewers in their reception of the images. By making the viewer a first-hand witness to these rape scenes, Goya accomplishes greater empathy for the women than other artistic portrayals of rape, however, he also unintentionally sheds a spotlight on the callousness of the viewer, and by extension, the artist himself. Both created and publicly received my men, the scenes of sexual violence shown in plates 9-11 display and discuss the rape of women as a means to an end in which the lives and suffering of these women, fictional or real, are periphery to what acts of sexual violence say about the men who wage war. Although art historians and critics today may consider the beauty of the plate’s compositions, is it at all possible for scenes which portray violence against women, as in the Disasters of War, to be considered beautiful? I would like to address how these images were received when The Disasters of War was released in 1863, considering the plate’s reception by contemporaneous art critics such Enrique Mélida within the context of how rape was understood in the nineteenth century. By comparing They don’t want it, Nor do these, and Nor those to portrayals of rape by Goya and other nineteenth-century artists, in addition to portrayals of rape by female artists, I hope to clarify where Goya’s rape scenes reside on a spectrum of artistic representations of rape, ranging from exploitative to empathetic.