The Art of Witnessing: Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War by Michael Iarocci, and: Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique by Anthony J. Cascardi (review)

Reviewed by: The Art of Witnessing: Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War by Michael Iarocci, and: Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique by Anthony J. Cascardi Andrei Pop Keywords Goya, Spanish Art, Graphic Art, Painting, Critique, History, Enlightenment, Revolution, Reason, Witnessing, Atrocity, Representation, Artifice, Secularization, Bourbon Restoration, Peninsular War, Sublime, Kant, Manet, Modern Art iarocci, michael. The Art of Witnessing: Francisco de Goya's Disasters of War. U of Toronto P, 2023, 296 pp. cascardi, anthony j. Francisco de Goya and the Art of Critique. Zone Books, 2022, 376 pp. [H]abiendo y debiendo ser los historiadores puntuales, verdaderos y no nada apasionados, y que ni el interés ni el miedo, el rencor ni la afición no les haga torcer del camino de la verdad, cuya madre es la historia, émula del tiempo, depósito de las acciones, testigo de lo pasado, ejemplo y aviso de lo presente, advertencia de lo por venir. Don Quijote, ch. 9 Recently, I heard a Spanish specialist inveigh against art-historical enthusiasm for the art of Francisco de Goya separated from the history of Spanish art. I had no reply, but a reasonable one might be that Goya's classic status transcends context, so that, like Cervantes, he touches people indifferent to Murillo or Góngora. Does such a canonical defense justify the industry of Goya scholarship? The question struck me while reading two accomplished new monographs, both by Spanish literary historians working at the University of California, Berkeley. Michael Iarocci's Art of Witnessing and Tony Cascardi's Goya and the Art of Critique, which preceded it by a year, are detailed treatments respectively of the first half of the Desastres de la Guerra and Goya's oeuvre as a critique of Enlightenment. The two books differ in focus and range of references, but they are one in asserting Goya's world-historical significance. The Art of Witnessing has an unusual structure, which closely mirrors its object. Goya's 80 Desastres de la Guerra, etched as the Peninsular War drew [End Page 191] to a close, were not published in Madrid by the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando until 1863, three and a half decades after the painter's death. The reasons for the delay aren't clear, nor why two additional plates turned up in 1870, and were only published in 1957. One could write the history of modern Spain through the reception of the Desastres, and Iarocci does this to an extent, incorporating Spanish sources from the 1860s through the Franco era and beyond. But there are no archival finds: the book is "a useful introduction to the complexity of Goya's prints," particularly the relation between image and caption, and between consecutive prints in the series. For experts, this is "not a radically new take … but an invitation to look again with fresh eyes" (10). In particular, Goya's moral self-reflection takes center stage at the expense of photojournalistic tendencies that critics have seen in the prints. Characteristically, Iarocci is kind to these competing, often not very plausible views. As a result of this effort at a steady commentary, the book consists of an introduction (or three, because the "beginnings" of the title page and the 1863 preface merit small chapters), an afterword, and an essay for each of the first 48 Disasters, the ones dealing explicitly with the war and immediate consequences (executions, torture, refugees), but not with famine (48–64) and the allegorical critique of the war and the Bourbon restoration (68–82). The entries are close readings of the prints and captions (which, unfortunately, are not reproduced in Goya's calligraphy). Endnotes—really, bibliographic essays— name and quote earlier writers, particularly Spaniards. Even among the included prints, the treatment is not uniform: starting with print 21, groups of two or three prints are often treated together, so that 16 essays are devoted to the last 27 prints. This is consistent with Iarocci's argument that the Desastres' impact is cumulative. "To see one killing field can be compelling. To come upon such fields time and again … is an experience of a different order" (103). The author exaggerates in...

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