The Darkness of Francisco de Goya
How the evolution of Francisco de Goya's art reflected the disintegration of his country and his own descent into insanity.
Francisco de Goya was born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, Aragon, a village famous for the production of ice. From humble beginnings, he grew up to be a genius painter.
For much of his earlier career, Goya painted portraits and colourful tapestry cartoons to hang in the palaces of Spain’s ruling class. He was a social person, and this helped. It was the intimacy of his portraits which made him so renowned; an intimacy he could not have achieved without a sense of love and fascination with those around him - be them aristocrats, builders, or beggars.
Above, The Parasol, 1777
His ability to make flesh so life-like meant that some paintings of his were deemed too ripe to publish. La Maja Desnuda, painted sometime in the 1790s, was kept private by its commissioner Manuel de Godoy, the Spanish Prime Minister, before being confiscated by the Spanish Inquisition in 1813. It now hangs in the Museo del Prado in Madrid and is considered one of the earliest positive depictions of a woman’s pubic hair in Western art.
Above, La Maja Desnuda, 1790s
But by the late 1810s, Goya the lover of people and portrait painter to the rich, had passed into memory. Goya, now in his old age, had become a very different artist. Lonely, paranoid and deaf, Goya, holed up in an isolated farmhouse, painted some of the most horrifying artwork ever produced. What caused this change?
As well as being a great technical painter, Goya was also a chronicler of his times. He lived through the bloodiest time in Spanish history - bloodier even than the Civil War.
In 1808, France, led by that snake Napoleon, invaded their former ally, Spain. Napoleon forced Carlos IV and his son Fernando VII to abdicate and installed a puppet king, Joseph Bonaparte, on the throne. This was followed by six years of vicious fighting, much of it guerrilla warfare fought by townspeople against the occupying French army. The Torres de Quart in Valencia still bear the scars of French cannonballs.
Then there was political upheaval. The parts of Spain not under French control divided into local Juntas. These Juntas were the official resistance to France. Eventually, they organised themselves into the Supreme Central Junta, which convened the Cortes of Cádiz. They chose the southern coastal city as it was an enlightened place and one of the only areas in Spain not under French control; although France soon set up a blockade around it. Regardless, the Cortes declared itself the sole representative of Spanish sovereignty and drew up a constitution.
The 1812 constitution was radical for its time. It provided for a constitutional monarchy subject to parliamentary control and gave representation to Spain’s colonies in America and the Philippines. It did away with feudalism, brought in modern property rights, and stripped privileges from the Catholic Church. This document would set the tone for European liberalism throughout the 19th century and serve as a starting point for constitutions in Spain’s colonies when they declared their independence. They would soon take advantage of the chaos in Spain to do just that.
Goya was one of these liberals; a big fan of the constitution. Having suffered the pains of religious inquisition and then the terrors of war over the preceding years, the constitution seemed to Goya to be a symbol of Spain finding light in the darkness. His art during this period reflected this. In Lux ex tenebris (Latin for ‘Light in Darkness’, taken from a passage in the Bible telling of Christ’s arrival in an uncomprehending world) a young woman flies angelically, holding the constitution. Light shines from the book, while under her dark figures writhe and wail; Goya’s depiction of the clergy who had attempted to thwart the constitution and would now be left powerless by it.
But when Spain, with the help of Britain and Portugal, eventually won the war against France, Fernando VII returned and abolished the constitution, at the behest of conservatives and the clergy. Fernando VII, a mean-spirited and volatile character, once again had all power over Spain vested in him. But his realm was diminishing; the colonies were declaring independence and cutting off tax income to Spain, almost bankrupting it.
During the war and its aftermath, Goya created a series of prints known as The Disasters of War (Los desastres de la guerra), documenting the horrors which he had seen and heard about during the war. There are brutal scenes of garrotting, guerrilla violence, fleeing refugees and soldiers assaulting women. Art historians view them as a protest against the violence of the uprising against the French and the setbacks to the liberal cause that succeeded it, and Goya never dared publish them while he was still alive.
Above, a guerilla in Madrid prepares to behead a French soldier, from Desastres
As Spain disintegrated, so did Goya’s body. He had gone deaf in the early 1790s from a mystery illness, and this impacted his mind. The once social man became withdrawn and preoccupied with his health and, due to the rushing noises in his ears caused by his deafness, feared for his sanity. His work changed dramatically. It was during this time that he painted the Caprichos - a set of etchings condemning universal follies - and the haunting Yard with Lunatics.
After the war, feeling disillusioned with the retreat into medievalism which Fernando VII’s return meant for Spain, Goya moved to a large, lonely house outside Madrid. The neighbours had nicknamed it the House of the Deaf Man, for its previous occupant. It was here where he painted his darkest works, directly onto the house’s plaster walls; works he never intended anyone else to see.
These paintings have come to be known as The Black Paintings. Goya had been through years of war, witnessing intense panic and fear both around and within him. These paintings were the result. Their primary concern is the dark side of human nature: hatred, violence, and the ease with which we are corrupted.
In Witches’ Sabbath, a circle of witches gather around the Devil, who has taken the form of a goat and is in the middle of a satanic sermon. The witches’ faces are distorted and grotesque; some seem to be in the throes of ecstasy, while others can’t meet the Devil’s eye.
In Fight With Cudgels, two men lunge at each other with sticks, surrounded by desolate hills, while trapped up to their knees in mud. The picture of two commoners taking lumps out of each other while they both sink into a marsh seems like a premonition of The Two Spains; the division between monarchists and republicans which would dominate Spain for the next two centuries and more.
The more you look at the paintings, the stronger the feeling of dread they emit. Even the empty spaces in The Dog seem to hum with menace.
The Fates, possibly the most dream-like of the paintings, depicts four figures hovering over a landscape. Three of them are the Moirai; the Ancient Greek incarnations of destiny who decide how long we live. The fourth figure, his hands bound, is their subject. Goya, fearing his end was near, no doubt saw himself in the picture.
The most horrific of them all is Saturn Devouring His Son. In this scene from mythology, Saturn devours his baby son; an act he had been driven to by a prophecy that his child would overthrow him. Many artists have painted it, but Goya’s is the most horrible, most horrific. Saturn, eyes wide with madness, prepares to bite into the baby’s arm. The other arm and head are already gone, and blood drips down the pale, dead skin and onto Saturn’s hands, which clasp the infant tightly. How tormented must Goya have been to create such an image?
Goya, who in his earlier years found fame making flesh look warm and life-like, had turned his powers to creating images of visceral horror. War had awoken him to the darkness inside the human soul; shown him the barbarity humans were capable of. The earlier and later parts of his career reflected the diversity of human existence - joy and lightness; fear and darkness - and the eternal conflicts at the heart of Spain’s subconscious which occasionally erupt with tragic consequences. They would erupt again, little over one hundred years later, in the Spanish Civil War.
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