Truth has died
1814 - 1815.Not on display
This scene, along with Disaster 80, Will she live again?, marks the end of the series of engravings that constitute the first edition of the Disasters of War (1863). Despite the apparent disorder visible in this series, it has an inner logic that presents the subjects more or less in groups, using titles to link the images and creating sequences in which the artist uses narrative tools to develop his moral proposals about the perversity of war. The last three prints from the Emphatic Caprichos—the group that constitutes the series’ final works—maintain its allegorical character but are distanced from the previous prints’ function as fables. This sequence’s political content is clear. Truth has died shows the recumbent body of a bare-breasted young woman dressed in white and glowing with a light that allows us to see the expressions of the figures participating in her burial. Over the course of the Disasters, Goya uses the female body—sometimes with a markedly sensual character—to convey the tragedy of war. Here, he presents it as an allegory of Truth, which illuminates everything. Justice appears at her right, dressed in a similar manner and lamenting her loss. On the other hand, a bishop wearing a miter appears to be blessing her cadaver while two monks, hoes in hand, contentedly prepare to dig her grave. Behind them, numerous clergymen look on with greater or lesser interest, including a blindfolded man leaning on a cane. The criticism of the Church is clear here, and we can interpret it politically as a reference to the restoration of their privileges after the Decree of May 4, 1814 abolished the Constitution of 1812. This image’s link to the following print is determined by the question posed in the latter’s title: Will she live again? Given the ironic character of many of Goya’s titles, we may well conclude that the hopefulness attributed to it by some writers is improbable, and that, instead, it should be understood in terms of the skepticism that characterizes much of the artist’s final work. Moreover, were Truth ever to live again, it would be surrounded by the creatures of the night—also present in that image—that symbolize the Ancien régime and would use their laws and power to finish her off and thus keep mankind, including the man sketchily depicted behind her, bound and gagged (Text from: Matilla, J. M.: Desastre 79. Murió la Verdad/ Desastre 80. Si resucitará? in: Goya en tiempos de Guerra, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, pp. 346-348).
