El agarrotado (The garotted Man)

Goya's first works in the print medium were his etchings of 1778 after paintings by Velázquez. As the earliest etching of his own composition, El agarrotado stands at the beginning of his oeuvre as an independent printmaker. It is a bewildering choice of subject, as one must assume that the image of a garrotted man would have been almost impossible to sell. Right from the beginning, Goya put his personal, artistic, political and personal interests above commercial considerations, as he would 35 years later with Los Desastres de la Guerra. Thus began his career as a printmaker with a unflinching eye for human suffering and cruelty.