Resumen de From Melancholy Pleasure to National Mourning: "Ruinas de Zaragoza" and the Invention of the Modern Ruin
Juan Gálvez and Fernando Brambila ultimately used their 1812 set of prints Ruinas de Zaragozza (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston) to protest the horrors of war. This series, which visualizes the Spanish War of Independence against Napoleon, participated in a novel approach to the ruin category. Here, the reinvented ruin genre was borrowed from 18th-century modes of representation and aesthetic categories, which were combined with the highly politicized subject of new ruins created by a modern war. In that century, viewers' observation of ruined structures and monuments was marked by a melancholic longing for the past. By contrast, the artists who created this series hoped that viewers of the Spanish ruins would mourn the loss of the citizens and cultural patrimony of Zaragozza.
