LEONARDO RODRIGUES SILVÉRIO

Our research focuses on Francisco Goya's series of engravings “The Disasters of War”, which deals with the Napoleonic invasions and the reign of Joseph Bonaparte in Spain between 1808 and 1814. From this, Goya produced a fragmentary corpus of around 80 scenes focusing on the motif of death (such as shootings, starvation, rape, mutilation and dismemberment). We believe it is possible to analyze the work based on the concept of melancholy, going through Antiquity (Hippocrates, Aristotle and Galen), followed by Modernity (with Robert Burton and Charles Baudelaire) and reaching the 20th century (with Sigmund Freud and Walter Benjamin). We draw on the work of art historian Georges Didi-Huberman to understand the relationship between images, affect and temporality. We turn to interpreters of the history of art and engraving to understand how Goya appropriates the iconographic tradition of melancholy (including names such as Rubens and Rembrandt) and reconstructs it in representations based on the experience of war marked by the violence that characterizes and disfigures subjects in the post-French Revolution period and the disillusionment of its promises in Modernity.