Murio la Verdad. (Truth died.)

Inscriptions

Inscribed, in plate, lower center: Murio la Verdad.; inscribed, in plate, upper left: 79; inscribed, in graphite, upper right: 79 Watermark: HGO/Palmette

Label

The last few plates in Goya’s series consider the aftermath of fighting. More allegorical than the early parts of the series, these images bring in ghoulish monsters that evoke the unspeakable horrors of war. In Plate 72, a birdlike creature with bat wings feasts on the corpse of a dead man; the fluttering of similar creatures behind suggests an ominous flock ready to revel in the results of war. Plate 79 points to a similarly bleak future. On the ground, a partially clothed woman appears to be dead, surrounded by a group of onlookers. Rays of light emit from her crumpled form. While one woman covers her face, the remaining group seems threatening. Goya’s caption, written in the past tense, proclaims: Truth has died. Do the beams of light around the woman’s body, representing Truth itself, suggest that hope is still possible?

From the 2023 exhibition Recording War: Images of Violence 1500 – 1900, curated by Elizabeth Rice Mattison, Andrew W. Mellon Associate Curator of Academic Programming

Course History

SPAN 31, Introduction to Hispanic Studies II: 18th and 19th Centuries, Jose del Pino, Winter 2014

SPAN 31, Introduction to Hispanic Studies II: 18th and 19th Centuries, Txetxu Aguado, Winter 2014

SPAN 65.12, Reading Spain with Goya, Sara Munoz, Fall 2022

Spanish 31.01, Introduction to Hispanic Literature II, Sebastian Diaz, Winter 2023

Anthropology 3.01, Introduction to Anthropology, Charis Ford Morrison Boke 1, Summer 2023

Studio Art 27.01/28.01/74.01, Printmaking I/II/III, Josh Dannin, Summer 2023

Spanish 31.01, Introduction to Hispanic Literature II, Sebastian Diaz, Winter 2024

Spanish 31.02, Introduction to Hispanic Literature II, Sebastian Diaz, Winter 2024

Facilitated Experience: Special Tour - From Goya to Photojournalism, Summer 2023

Spanish 31.01, Introduction to Spanish Literature II, Sebastian Diaz, Summer 2024

Spanish 31.01, Introduction to Spanish Literature II, Sebastian Diaz, Summer 2024

Exhibition History

A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, October 17-December 20, 1998.

Fatal Consequences: Callot, Goya, and the Horrors of War, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, September 8-December 9, 1990.

Recording War: Images of Violence, 1500-1900, Ivan Albright Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, August 23-December 9, 2023.

Publication History

Timothy Rub, Egbert Haverkamp-Begemann, Kelly Pask, "A Gift to the College: The Mr. and Mrs. Adolph Weil Jr. Collection of Master Prints", Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1998, listed, p.101, no. 180.

Hilliard T. Goldfarb and Reva Wolf, Fatal Consequences: Callot, Goya, and the Horrors of War, Hanover, New Hampshire: Trustees of Dartmouth College, 1990, p. 80, ill. XXVIII.

Provenance

Date unknown, in the collection of Felix Somary (1881-1956), Vienna and Zurich; sold Sotheby's, New York, May 3, 1978, lot 2; purchased by Adolph Weil, Jr., Montgomery, Alabama; 1991 given to Dartmouth College by Adolph Weil, Jr., Class of 1935.

Catalogue Raisonne

Delteil 198; Harris 199

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Subject