Para eso habeis nacido ('This is what you were born for') (D. 131; H. 132)

Details

Francisco de Goya y Lucientes
Para eso habeis nacido ('This is what you were born for') (D. 131; H. 132)
etching with drypoint and engraving, Harris's state I ii, an exceptionally rare working proof before letters and numbers (Harris records one other example, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), a fine impression, on laid paper, with wide margins, the number 12 in pen and ink in the upper right corner, the artist's name and a price (5/-) in pencil in the lower margin, faint soft creasing at the upper left sheet corner, scattered foxing at the left sheet edge, remains of old adhesive on the reverse at the upper sheet edge where previously mounted
P. 162 x 234 mm., S. 220 x 320 mm.

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Lot Essay

The scene depicts the effects of the Typhus epidemic that struck Zaragoza in January 1809, adding to the woes of the beleaguered city.
'The season proved (...) mild enough to increase the progress of the disease (...) The average daily deaths from this cause was at this time not less than three hundred and fifty (...) neither medicines nor necessary food were to be procured, nor needful attendance, for the ministers of charity themselves became victims of the disease (...) There was now no respite neither by day nor night for this devoted city; even the natural order of light and darkness was destroyed: by day it was involved in a red sulphurous heaven; by night the fire of cannon and mortars, and the flames of the burning houses kept it in a state of horrible illumination.' (Robert Southey, History of the Peninsular War, London, 1823, vol. 1, p. 246, quoted in The Changing Image, Prints by Francisco Goya, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1974, p. 144)

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