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| Capricho No.43 - The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters - 1797 |
I will never forget the first time I saw a full exhibition of Goya's paintings, drawings and sketches. I was 17 years old, didn't know much about Goya, didn't know much about the history behind, didn't know much about art... I will never forget because when I saw the sequence of paintings lined up on the wall; I cried. I cried so much I had to leave the museum to breathe.
Today I know a lot about Goya and his history, 10 years passed by and art became the meaning of my life. But looking at the paintings of Goya still leads me to my 17 years old self and it's hard not to cry, actually it's harder.
In order to understand Goya, it is necessary first to follow his long trajectory.
Goya had a long life, 82 years ranging from the admiration and perks of the Spanish nobility, the terrors of war, political turmoil, and the edge of madness and among all this an intense production of every form of art that his genius conceived.
Francisco Goya was born in Spain, 1746, in a tiny village called Fuendetodos south of Zaragoza.
He began painting at the age of 14 with local artists from Zaragoza and his talent was evident and he learned faster and faster.
He moved to Madrid in 1763 and made friends with artists and also there produced works that exalted the beauty of Spain with an extreme diversity of themes.
But two failed attempts to join the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid led him to leave the country and move to Rome, Italy, in 1770. It was there that he met the German painter Anton Raphael Mengs and it was Mengs who led Goya to the stage of his life in which he would work for the Court, convincing Goya to return to Madrid in 1774 where he would now receive constant orders from the highest aristocracy what allowed him to create pliable and extravagant portraits, with broad strokes that created a mark in his style.
In 1774, 28 years old, Goya was introduced to the royal studios and thus began a close and productive relationship with the Spanish nobility that would extend during the rule of four monarchs.
Goya's early works were cheerful and tender, full of color and light, celebrating Spanish life with relaxed scenes in a free and fun Rococo style.
At the age of 40 Goya was hired as a royal painter by King Carlos III and in 1789 became the royal painter of the newly crowned Carlos IV and it was precisely in this year that the world turned upside down. The French monarchy was overthrown by the Revolution and the period of turmoil that lasted until 1793 culminated with a declaration of war between France and Spain and the thing became very ugly to the population and the cities.
Goya moved to Andalusia in the village of Cadiz in the company of his wealthy friend, businessman and art collector Sebastián Martinéz y Péres.
In Cadiz Goya ended up contracting several diseases that left him completely deaf. And in the same year that he went to Andalusia he returned to Madrid and from that moment his art totally transformed, became somber and disturbing, even grotesque.
Then Napoleon invaded Spain and the monarchy of Carlos IV was overthrown in 1808 and soon after the Peninsular War begins.
Although he repudiated all the French atrocities, Goya swore allegiance to Napoleon and with the fall of Napoleon in 1814 the French monarchy of Bourbon was restored, but the new king Ferdinand VII reinstated the Spanish Inquisition, declared himself "absolute monarch" and unleashed a reign of terror .
To make clear his position regarding his loyalty to Spain, Goya created works that celebrated the Spanish victory and shown the French violence and brutality.
Between 1820 and 1823 Goya moved to a small land in the countryside of Spain called "Quinta del Sordo" (House of the Deaf) which was an ironic coincidence because the name wasn't due to the deafness of Goya himself but of the former owner that was also deaf. There Goya developed an extensive series of terrifying and sinister paintings known as Black Paintings.
Too distressed by the political situation of Spain that seemed to have no end Goya moved to Bordeaux in France and stayed there until his death in 1828.
Having the history been told, we will follow his works over the years.
"The Sacrifice to Pan" - 1771
It is impossible to ignore both Goya's genius and petulance when moving to Rome, the center of Catholicism, he portrait the scene of a young woman making the gesture of an offering to a pagan god.
But let's be more philosophical about what Goya meant here.
The face of the young woman is clearly a caricature because Goya did never represent women in this way, with that pure and placid countenance. At the same time the pagan god for whom she makes the offering is without arms and has an impossible and exaggerated musculature, his face falling to the side like a drunkard. Meanwhile another young woman picks up from the floor a vase of wine that has fallen and is broken pouring the red liquid.
Perhaps this is a reflection of Goya on the real meaning of the transition from the Greek mythology to what he also understood to be mythological the Roman religion. Perhaps he is proposing that we think of the temporality of creeds and the fragility of religion when opposed to the politics. No matter how strong the pagan god was, he lost his arms. Will not return the spilled wine to the vase. And the purity of the young woman as much as her gesture of offering is a caricature of the human ingenuity that persists in their creeds.
"The Parasol" - 1777
This is a tapestry drawing. His humanistic approach shines in this piece by placing the figures visually large-scale, rejecting irrelevant small details in the background.
With the male figure blocking the sun from the female's face with an umbrella, Goya is free to investigate the effects of light and shadow on his face and is beautifully depicted. Another innovative element at this time is the unusual composition that Goya was known especially for weavers of these tapestries, who would be constantly frustrate Goya for creating such complex arrangements. Our point of view is particularly low, making us see the figure as if they were monumentally important. We get a sense of your high status with the texture of your clothes. Goya shows off his skills with an accurate representation of the silk dress of the young lady figure. We see his love of how light is reflected on different surfaces.
"The Nude Maja" - 1797
According to what Licht - Goya scholar and academic museum director; co-founder of the committee to rescue works of art ravaged by the floods in Florence - said this portrait was "the first totally profane life-size female nude in Western art without pretense to allegorical or mythological meaning".
We don't know who the model is, but it is logical that by the content and provocation of the work there are many theories of who the woman is. The Duchess of Alba, with whom Goya was sometimes thought to have had an affair, and Pepita Tudó, mistress of Manuel de Godoy are two of the women who may have been the woman, but it is impossible to know.
The paintings were never publicly exhibited during Goya's lifetime and were owned by Godoy. In 1808 all Godoy's was seized by Ferdinand VII after his fall from power and exile, and in 1813 the Inquisition confiscated both works as 'obscene', returning them in 1836 to the Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando.
Apart from explicit nudity, pubic hair and body position, what really provokes us it is the woman's gaze that openly calls the observer to lie down with her, touch her, let her seduce you and that is what she does.
"Carlos IV of Spain and His Family" - 1800
This is probably the most surreal family portrait ever painted, presumably all these people have never been all together at the same time not even for dinner.
Queen Louisa really was the one that commanded the kingdom while king Carlos preferred to spend the days hunting or traveling leaving his wife free to give orders and collect lovers, we do not even know if his sons were legitimate of the king.
Two curiosities about this portrait is that Goya painted himself in the scene, he appears in the left corner.
The other thing to note and to be as astonished is that behind the family, one of the two paintings that appear in the backgroud is a painting of Lot's biblical passage in which his daughters got Lot drunk and raped their own father to get pregnant of his children. (Genesis 19: 30-38)
"Witches" - 1798
"Witches' Sabbath" shows the devil in the form of a garlanded goat, surrounded by a coven of disfigured, young and aging witches in a moonlit barren landscape. The goat possesses large horns and is crowned by a wreath of oak leaves. An old witch holds an infant in her hands. The devil seems to be acting as priest at an initiation ceremony for the child, though popular superstition at the time believed the devil often fed on children and human fetuses. The skeletons of two infants can be seen; one discarded to the left, the other held by a crone in the centre foreground.
Typical of the imagery of witchcraft, many of the symbols used are inverted. The goat extends his left rather than right hoof towards the child, while the quarter moon faces out of the canvas at the top left corner. In the middle high-ground, a number of bats can be seen flying overhead, their flocking motion echoing the curve of the crescent moon.
Interest in the supernatural was a feature of Romanticism, and is to be found for example in Weber's opera Der Freischütz. However, in a Spanish context, Goya's paintings have been seen as a protest against those who upheld and enforced the values of the Spanish Inquisition, which had been active in Witch hunting during the seventeenth-century Basque witch trials. The later Witches Sabbath was painted as a bitter struggle raged between liberals and those in favour of a church and a royalist-lead state, which culminated in the so-called Ominous Decade (1823-1833). Both paintings can be seen as an attack on the superstitious beliefs rife in Spain during a period when tales of midnight gatherings of witches and the appearance of the devil were commonplace among the rural populace. They reflect the artist's disdain for the popular tendency towards superstition and the church-led return to medieval fears. Goya's depictions of such scenes mocked what he saw as medieval fears exploited by the established order for political and capital gain.
"Caprichos" 1797 - 1798
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| Capricho No. 8 - So they carried her off! |
Goya entered a phase of artistic experiment. Produced a set of 80 prints in aquatint and etching.
The themes of each drawing are profoundly critical and brutally acidic, and he traces his philosophical conceptions of society, politics, religion, and war being clear about only seeing ignorance and lack of reflection in all human actions. It is a whole that sings its disappointment with the whole mankind.
And the name of each drawing is a short explanation of its full meaning of irony.
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| Capricho No. 37 - Might not the pupil know more? |
Goya said about the series "the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance or self-interest have made usual".
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| Capricho No. 75 - Can't anyone unleash us? |
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| Capricho No. 76 - You understand?... Well, as I say... eh! Look out! Otherwise... |
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| Capricho No. 26 - Now they are sitting well. |
"The Third of May 1808" - 1814
As previously stated, Goya had to prove that despite having sworn loyalty to Napoleon and even moved to France he was not on the French side and he loved Spain. The result of this is probably the best known work of Goya the "Three of May 1808".
Napoleon's army occupied Spain, but on the night the second of May the citizens of Madrid rebelled against the French and started a riot, but soon at the next day "The Third of May", French troops quickly organized a revenge by executing hundreds of the rebels plus many absolutely innocent people.
The painting of the ruthless and cowardly massacre contains all the symbolism necessary to make a mark in memory of the cruelty and coldness of French artillery. Goya did not paint the scene where it actually happened that was next to the Royal Palace of Madrid in the Mountain of Prince Pío. Instead he creates an absolutely black background with just one tower to openly suggest that it was the political institutions that created the events.
The artillery soldiers are lined up in a robotic position and they have no faces. Goya's clear position on events, soldiers are mere objects of political power. The guns used by the soldiers, fixed bayonets, add a greater dimension of horror because the sharp blade was used to murder the victim in case the gunshot wound didn't kill.
We have the central character, a man with open arms with a face that expresses both mercy and acceptance, notice that his mouth has a slight blur, as if shouting or talking was just useless, the cry was veiled because death was certain.
Although Goya was strictly against the French atrocities he was a great admirer of the French Enlightenment, he did not support the Catholic institution and to demonstrate this he turns the central figure into the very figure of Christ being crucified, note that there are holes in the hands of man and, although there is a lamp on the floor, the light seems to come directly from the man.
To the right of the modern Christ of Goya is a man who is a pitiful figure, the white of his eyes shines with fear and he brings the hand to mouth with a childish gesture of dread.
To the left we see a Franciscan Friar and his hands are united in a gesture of supplication, this figure arises to remind us that the atrocity was deliberately arbitrary, since surely a Franciscan Friar would not be involved in the riot of the previous night.
The foreground of the painting shows the fate of those who are still alive, in a few seconds, as if it were just an earlier frame, they would all be dead in pools of blood.
"The Disasters of War" 1810 - 1820
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| Plate 39 - A heroic feat! With dead men! |
Another series, this time of 82 drawings in which Goya dedicates himself with all his soul and more, remembering that he was deaf, demonstrates the breadth and understanding that he has absorbed of all the years of turbulence and violence. The series was produced using a variety of intaglio printmaking techniques, mainly etching for the line work and aquatint for the tonal areas, but also engraving and drypoint.
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| Plate 15 - And it cannot be helped. |
The main focuses on war and mass incidents are the consequences of conflict on individual and civilian soldiers. The middle series (plaques 48-64) records the effects of the famine that hit Madrid in 1811-12, before the city was liberated from the French. The last 17 reflect a bitter disappointment of the liberals when the Bourbon monarchy, encouraged by the Catholic hierarchy, rejected a Spanish Constitution of 1812 and a state and religious reform. Goya picture the atrocities, starvation, degradation, and humiliation that are described as a "prodigious blossoming of anger."
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| Plate 18 - Bury them and keep quiet. |
In a letter sent to a friend Goya writes that the name of the series of drawings is "Fatal consequences of Spain's bloody war with Bonaparte, and other emphatic caprices".
Like other Spanish liberals, Goya was left in a difficult position after the French invasion. He had supported the initial aims of the French Revolution, and hoped its ideals would help liberate Spain from feudalism to become a secular, democratic political system. There were two conflicts being fought in Spain: the resistance against the French threat, and a domestic struggle between the ideals of liberal modernisation and the pre-political incumbent ruling class. The latter divide became more pronounced - and the differences far more entrenched - following the eventual withdrawal of the French.
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| Plate 71 - Against the common good. |
Art historians broadly agree that The Disasters of War is divided into three thematic groupings - war, famine, and political and cultural allegories. This sequence broadly reflects the order in which the plates were created.
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| Plate 4 - The women are courageous. |
In his 1947 book on Goya's etchings, English author Aldous Huxley observed that the images depict a recurrent series of pictorial themes: darkened archways "more sinister than those even of Piranesi's Prisons"; street corners as settings for the cruelty of the disparities of class; and silhouetted hilltops carrying the dead, sometimes featuring a single tree serving as gallows or repository for dismembered corpses. "And so the record proceeds, horror after horror, unalleviated by any of the splendors which other painters have been able to discover in war; for, significantly, Goya never illustrates an engagement, never shows us impressive masses of troops marching in column or deployed in the order of battle .... All he shows us is war's disasters and squalors, without any of the glory or even picturesqueness."
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| Plate 80 - Will she live again? (By "she" he means the Truth, is She that is lying dead but still resplendent.) |
We have as a result of his new technique and style the absence of melodrama or consciously artful presentation that would distance the viewer from the brutality of the subjects, as found in Baroque martyrdom. In addition, Goya refuses to offer the stability of traditional narrative. Instead, his composition tends to highlight the most disturbing aspects of each work.
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| Plate 3 - The same. |
"Black Paintings" 1823
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| Saturn Devouring His Son |
It is the title given to the series of paintings that Goya produced in the Quinta del Surdo "House of the Deaf". Using oil paints and working directly on the walls of his dining and sitting rooms, Goya created works with dark, disturbing themes. The paintings were not commissioned and were not meant to leave his home. It is likely that the artist never intended the works for public exhibition: these paintings are as close to being hermetically private as any that has ever been produced in the history of Western art.
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| Witches’ Sabbath |
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3040580/
Where to see Goya's works:
- Prado Museum, Madrid
- Museum of Fine Arts of Seville
- Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
- National Gallery, London
- Hermitage, St. Petersburg
- National Gallery, Washington D.C
- Museum Lasaro Galdiano, Madrid
- Louvre, Paris
- Meadows Museum, Dallas, Texas
- Fondazione Magnani-Rocca, Italy
- Saragossa Museum, Spain
- Many, many private collections.
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