Plate 78 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'He defends himself well' (Se defiende bien)

Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) Spanish

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Published in 1802, Giovanni Battista Casti’s political fable "Gli animali parlanti" (The talking animals) provided the source for the present print. Casti’s prologue justified the need for "enshrouding with the veil of allegory certain bold truths," an equally fitting description of Goya’s approach to the final group from the Disasters, to which this work belongs. In the fable, disputes in the animal kingdom stand in for the antagonism between despotic and liberal regimes, much as they might in this scene of a bucking horse menaced by a pack of foxes and hounds. The horse could be a reference to constitutional monarchies, and its animal opponents stand-ins for reactionary forces.

Plate 78 from "The Disasters of War" (Los Desastres de la Guerra): 'He defends himself well' (Se defiende bien), Goya (Francisco de Goya y Lucientes) (Spanish, Fuendetodos 1746–1828 Bordeaux), Etching, drypoint, burin, burnisher

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