Die Herstellung von Kugeln in der Sierra de Tardienta

In October 1808 General Palafox brought Goya from Madrid to Zaragoza to see what the French siege had left of the city. Goya spent the years after that turning the journey into the etchings known as the Disasters of War. This small panel comes out of the same experience and looks at the fighting from much closer in. In the hills around Tardienta, about 50 kilometres north of Zaragoza, villagers ran a hidden workshop that cast bullets and mixed powder for the besieged city, and an inscription on the back of the panel says so. Goya painted a companion piece showing the powder-making, and the two have stayed together ever since. The prints that came out of the same war were not published until 1863, 35 years after he died.