Helmut C. Jacobs

In 1810, during the Peninsular War (1808?14), Francisco de Goya began working on the 82 prints that make up the Disasters of War, in which he artistically portrayed the experience of the drama of war and brutally captured the grim reality of its impact on people's lives. Drawing on books of emblems and literary sources, he sublimated and abstracted specific aspects and events of war, including torture, devastation, hunger and the horror of sexual violence as a weapon, which he was the first to depict, even though there was no social debate on its use as a means or consequence of armed conflict in his period. Despite not being published until 1863, 35 years after the painter's death, the series is among Goya's best-known works, and its influence on many later artists is undeniable.