Art Institute of Chicago

That is the worst of it!, plate 74 from The Disasters of War

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes

Date

1815/20, published 1863

Medium

Etching and burnishing on ivory wove paper with gilt edges

Culture

Spain

Department

Prints and Drawings

Institution

Art Institute of Chicago

In this etching Goya did not merely suggest the bestial behavior of the clergy, as in the other Disasters of War prints nearby. Going beyond masks and dramatic poses, here the artist depicted a fox or a wolf signing a document reading “Miserable humanity, the fault is yours,” assigning the blame for the world’s sad state to the church by handing the sheet to the tonsured friar in front of him. Propaganda images visually equating priests with hungry wolves are known from as early as the 16th-century German Protestant Reformation, an approach Goya drew on here.

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