Francisco Goya
The Great Goat
1797-98
Lazaro Galdiano
Museum, Madrid
This is one of eight paintings commissioned by the
Duchess of Osuna for her country house at Alameda.
The subject, similar
to that of etching No. 60 of Los Caprichos, enabled Goya to combine his
flair for fantasy
with savage attacks on the Church's abuses and
exploitation of superstitions and fears,
which were deeply rooted in the
popular imagination.
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Goya
The two chief aspects of Romanticism are combined in the work of
Goya: the exploration of the frontiers of a deeper life and the
integration of historical fact. In The Colossus, Goya portrays the
giant as bestial and strangely still. He stands against the dark and
misty skies, hovering above a land populated by fleeing people. The
painting represents the looming catastrophe of war, and the
abandonment of humanity to the destructive force of instinct. Other
key Goya works include Saturn Devouring His Own Son (1821-23), an
allegory of Spain destroying her own people, and a "reportage" of 65
etchings. The Disasters of War, executed between 1810 and 1820. In
these, the artist illustrates the massacres, rapes, violence,
assassinations, profanities, and crimes committed by both the French
and Spanish armies during the Napoleonic occupation. An obscure,
curious, and irrational element was apparent in Goya's work. In his
series of etchings Los Caprichos (published in 1799), there is none
of the gaiety often dominant in similarly titled works by Tiepolo,
Fragonard, or Guardi. The artist also questioned the excesses of his
imagination in Capricho No. 43, a self-portrait. His head lies
against a solid base, a metaphor for order within the world, while
he is in the middle of a nightmare. He entitled the piece "The sleep
of reason produces monsters", adding, "imagination abandoned by
reason generates monstrosity; together they form the mother of the
arts and the origin of marvels." This phrase sums up the aesthetic
ideal of Romanticism, for which art does not "redeem" sickness,
irrationality, or death but actually emanates from the same source. Goya's work was extremely advanced for its time, demonstrating an
astonishing technical skill in both etching and painting. His works
are characterized by problems and conflicts, unknown in 18th-century
iconography, and a sparse, bleak treatment of landscape. Goya's
portraits often reveal the extraordinary inner complexities of the
human soul - they can illustrate at once arrogance, authority, and a
sense of emptiness. Even when he was painting official canvases such
as the celebrated group portrait The Family of Charles IV
(1800-01),
the human frailty of the subjects was made apparent. Goya's
technique for painting nudes was to have a decisive influence on
late Romantic and even Impressionist painting. His The Maja Nude
(1800) is probably one of the most famous nudes in the history of
art. He was also master of fresco painting, as is clear from the
terrifying "black paintings" (1820-22) from the "House of the Deaf
Man'', his country home, which were transferred to canvas in 1873.
Unique for his time, Goya prefigured many of the themes of modern
art in a wide-ranging body of work that displayed an unrivalled
intensity of expression.
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Francisco
Goya
(Encyclopaedia Britannica)
1746-1828
Spain
Consummately Spanish artist whose multifarious paintings, drawings, and engravings
reflected contemporary historical upheavals and influenced important 19th- and
20th-century painters. The series of etchings "Los desastres de la guerra"
("The Disasters of War," 1810-14 ) records the horrors of the Napoleonic
invasion. His masterpieces in painting include "The Naked Maja" and "The
Clothed Maja" (c. 1800-05).
Early training and career.
Goya began his studies in Zaragoza
with José Luzán y Martínez, a local artist trained in Naples, and was later a pupil, in
Madrid, of the court painter Francisco Bayeu, whose sister he married in 1773. He went to
Italy to continue his studies and was in Rome in 1771. In the same year he returned to
Zaragoza, where he obtained his first important commission for frescoes in the cathedral,
which he executed at intervals during the next 10 years. These and other early religious
paintings made in Zaragoza are in the Baroque-Rococo style then current in Spain and are
influenced in particular by the great Venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, who
spent the last years of his life in Madrid (1762-70), where he had been invited to paint
ceilings in the royal palace.
Goya's career at court began in 1775, when
he painted the first of a series of more than 60 cartoons (preparatory paintings; mostly
preserved in the Prado, Madrid), on which he was engaged until 1792, for the Royal
Tapestry Factory of Santa Bárbara. These paintings of scenes of contemporary life, of
aristocratic and popular pastimes, were begun under the direction of the German artist
Anton Raphael Mengs, a great exponent of Neoclassicism who, after Tiepolo's death, had
become undisputed art dictator at the Spanish court. In Goya's early cartoons the
influence of Tiepolo's decorative style is modified by the teachings of Mengs,
particularly his insistence on simplicity. The later cartoons reflect his growing
independence of foreign traditions and the development of an individual style, which began
to emerge through his study of the paintings of the 17th-century court painter Diego
Velázquez in the royal collection, many of which he copied in etchings (c. 1778).
Later in life he is said to have acknowledged three masters: Velázquez, Rembrandt,
and, above all, nature. Rembrandt's etchings were doubtless a source of inspiration for
his later drawings and engravings, while the paintings of Velázquez directed him to the
study of nature and taught him the language of realism.
In 1780 Goya was elected a member of the
Royal Academy of San Fernando, Madrid, his admission piece being a "Christ on the
Cross," a conventional composition in the manner of Mengs but painted in the
naturalistic style of Velázquez' "Christ on the Cross," which he doubtless
knew. In 1785 he was appointed deputy director of painting at the Academy and in the
following year painter to the king, Charles III. To this decade belong his earliest known
portraits of court officials and members of the aristocracy, whom he represented in
conventional 18th-century poses. The stiff elegance of the figures in full-length
portraits of society ladies, such as "The Marquesa de Pontejos," and the fluent
painting of their elaborate costumes also relates them to Velázquez' court portraits, and
his representation of "Charles III as Huntsman" (private collection) is based
directly on Velázquez' royal huntsmen.
Period under Charles IV.
The death of
Charles III in 1788, a few months before the outbreak of the French
Revolution, brought to an end the period of comparative prosperity
and enlightenment in which Goya reached maturity. The rule of
reaction and political and social corruption that followed--under
the weak and stupid Charles IV and his clever, unscrupulous queen,
Maria Luisa--ended with the Napoleonic invasion of Spain. It was
under the patronage of the new king, who raised him at once to the
rank of court painter, that Goya became the most successful and
fashionable artist in Spain; he was made director of the Academy in
1795 (but resigned two years later for reasons of health) and first
court painter in 1799. Though he welcomed official
honours and worldly success with undisguised enthusiasm, the record
that he left of his patrons and of the society in which he lived is
ruthlessly penetrating. After an illness in 1792 that left him
permanently deaf, his art began to take on a new character, which
gave free expression to the observations of his searching eye and
critical mind and to his newly developed faculty of imagination.
During his convalescence he painted a set of cabinet pictures said
to represent "national diversions," which he submitted to the Vice
Protector of the Academy with a covering letter (1794), saying, "I
have succeeded in making observations for which there is normally no
opportunity in commissioned works, which give no scope for fantasy
and invention." The set was completed by "The Madhouse" in 1794, a
scene that Goya had witnessed in Zaragoza, painted in a broad,
sketchy manner, with an effect of exaggerated realism that borders
on caricature. For his more purposeful and serious satires, however,
he now began to use the more intimate mediums of drawing and
engraving. In "Los caprichos," a series of 80 etchings published in
1799, he attacked political, social, and religious abuses, adopting
the popular imagery of caricature, which he enriched with highly
original qualities of invention. Goya's masterly use of the recently
developed technique of aquatint for tonal effects gives "Los
caprichos" astonishing dramatic vitality and makes them a major
achievement in the history of engraving. Despite the veiled language
of designs and captions and Goya's announcement that his themes were
from the "extravagances and follies common to all society," they
were probably recognized as references to well-known persons and
were withdrawn from sale after a few days. A few months later,
however, Goya was made first court painter. Later he was apparently
threatened by the Inquisition, and in 1803 he presented the plates
of "Los caprichos" to the King in return for a pension for his son.
While uncommissioned
works gave full scope for "observations," "fantasy," and
"invention," in his commissioned paintings Goya continued to use conventional
formulas. His decoration of the church of San Antonio de la Florida, Madrid (1798), is
still in the tradition of Tiepolo; but the bold, free execution and the expressive realism
of the popular types used for religious and secular figures are unprecedented. In his
numerous portraits of friends and officials a broader technique is combined with a new
emphasis on characterization. The faces of his sitters reveal his lively discernment of
personality, which is sometimes appreciative, particularly in his portraits of women, such
as that of "Doña Isabel de Porcel," but which is often far from flattering, as
in his royal portraits. In the group of "The Family of Charles IV," Goya,
despite his position as court painter, has portrayed the ugliness and vulgarity of the
principal figures so vividly as to produce the effect of caricature.
The Napoleonic
invasion and period after the restoration. In 1808, when Goya was at the height of his
official career, Charles IV and his son Ferdinand were forced to abdicate in quick
succession, Napoleon's armies entered Spain, and Napoleon's brother Joseph was placed on
the throne. Goya retained his position as court painter, but in the course of the war he
portrayed Spanish as well as French generals, and in 1812 he painted a portrait of
"The Duke of Wellington." It was, however, in a series of etchings, "Los
desastres de la guerra" (first published 1863), for which he made drawings during the
war, that he recorded his reactions to the invasion and to the horrors and disastrous
consequences of the war. The violent and tragic events, which he doubtless witnessed, are
represented not with documentary realism but in dramatic compositions--in line and
aquatint--with brutal details that create a vivid effect of authenticity.
On the restoration of
Ferdinand VII in 1814, after the expulsion of the invaders, Goya was pardoned for having
served the French king and reinstated as first court painter. "The 2nd of May 1808:
The Charge of the Mamelukes" and "The 3rd of May 1808: The Execution of the
Defenders of Madrid" were painted to commemorate the popular insurrection in
Madrid. Like "Los desastres," they are compositions of dramatic realism, and
their monumental scale makes them even more moving. The impressionistic
style in which they are painted foreshadowed and influenced later 19th-century French
artists, particularly Manet, who was also inspired by the composition of "The 3rd of
May." In several portraits of Ferdinand VII, painted after his restoration, Goya
evoked--more forcefully than any description--the personality of the cruel tyrant, whose
oppressive rule drove most of his friends and eventually Goya himself into exile. He
painted few other official portraits, but those of his friends and relations and his
"Self-Portraits" (1815) are equally subjective. Some of his religious
compositions of this period, the "Agony in the Garden" and "The Last
Communion of St. Joseph of Calasanz" (1819), are more suggestive of sincere devotion
than any of his earlier church paintings. The enigmatic "black paintings" with
which he decorated the walls of his country house, the "Quinta del Sordo"
(1820-23, now in the Prado) and "Los proverbios" or "Los disparates,"
a series of etchings made at about the same time (though not published until 1864), are,
on the other hand, nightmare visions in expressionist language that seem to reflect
cynicism, pessimism, and despair.
Last years
In 1824, when the
failure of an attempt to establish a liberal government had led to renewed persecution,
Goya applied for permission to go to France for reasons of health. After visiting Paris he
settled in voluntary exile in Bordeaux, where he remained, apart from a brief trip to
Madrid, until his death. There, in spite of old age and infirmity, he continued to record
his impressions of the world around him in paintings, drawings, and the new technique of
lithography, which he had begun to use in Spain. His last paintings include genre subjects
and several portraits of friends in exile: "Don Juan Bautista de Muguiro,"
"Leandro Fernández de Moratín," and "Don José Pío de Molina,"
which show the final development of his style toward a synthesis of form and character in
terms of light and shade, without outline or detail and with a minimum of colour.
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Francisco de Goya:
The Burial of the Sardine,
after 1812
Heathen carnival dance
(Rose-Marie & Rainer Hagen)
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Some time after 1812, in a period of hardship for his country and
himself, Francisco Goya painted an exuberant scene showing the
revelry of the people of Madrid on Ash Wednesday. Liberal spirits
like Goya had suffered under absolutism and the terror of the
Inquisition, and the painting, a testimony to the customs and zest
for life of the common people, reflects the artist's own feelings of
anxiety and affliction. Measuring 82.5 x 62cm, the work is now in
the Royal Academy of San Fernando, Madrid.
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Francisco de Goya
The Burial of the Sardine
1812-14
Oil on panel, 82,5 x 59 cm
Museo de la Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid
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Believers throughout Catholic Spain flocked to church on Ash
Wednesday. "For dust thou art, and unto dust shallt thou return" -
uttering the sacred text the priest drew an ashen cross on the
forehead of each member of the congregation, admonishing them to
repent their sins. In Madrid, by contrast, Ash Wednesday was a day
of dancing and drinking as the Carnival reached its climax.
A surging mass of people gathers under a February sky. Men, women
and children, most of them masked or at least disguised, crowd
around four dancing figures: three in white, the fourth dressed as a
bull in a death-mask. The figures appear to dance in step, some with
arms raised gracefully above their heads, others gesticulating
wildly. They have no need of accompaniment; there is no sign of a
guitar. The rhythm is marked by the clatter of castanets and
stamping feet, and by the clapping and snapping fingers of the
spectators.
The scene has an air of improvisation, as if a group of people had
decided, quite spontaneously, to perform a folk dance or some form
of hilarious grotesquerie, perhaps the caricature of a seguidilla -
hardly surprising in a land where every little girl, according to
local legend, is born dancing. There was dancing at every occasion
in Spain, even at the most important religious festivals. When a
procession took place at Valencia, for example, it was customary for
seven gypsies to dance a sacred round in front of the Holy
Sacrament.
Goya's dancing scene, including the figures in white, the "bull",
the man with the lance and a "bear" padding about in the foreground,
forms part of a bizzare ceremony which took place in Madrid each
year on Ash Wednesday, called "The Burial of the Sardine".
After carousing and revelling all through the last night of the
Carnival, the population of Madrid donned their masks and costumes
and took to the streets for a final fling. Towards evening, crowding
onto the packed promenade at the Prado, they swelled the ranks of a
burlesque "funeral march" which left the town by the Toledo gate.
Not until they had reached the banks of the Manzanares, a favourite
recreation spot, did they finally come to a halt.
Traditionally, the march was led by three masked figures, who may be
among Goya's dancers: "Uncle Chispas" (the spark) with wild, rolling
eyes, the vain heart-breaker "Juanillo", and the headstrong,
beautiful "Chusca". The procession, with the masked figures at its
head, made a mockery of the earnest pomp of Church parades. To the
solemn roll of drums, sombre-looking men in hoods carried - instead
of pictures of the saints -banners proclaiming a moon-faced,
grinning King of the Carnival, as well as a giant straw doll called
"Pelele", with a tiny dangling sardine.
Goya painted neither Pelele nor sardine - whose origin,
incidentally, scholars are unable to trace. Instead, he showed the
procession at one of the stages along its route, or perhaps simply a
scene in the meadows beside the Manzanares, while elsewhere, to the
din of exploding fireworks, the fish was buried and the straw doll
went up in flames.
It was not only an occasion for dancing, but for much eating and
drinking: on this first day of Lenten fasting, Church rules were
brushed aside while roast kids and fat hams were consumed.
It is not known whether the Inquisition, which continued to spread
terror in Goya's lifetime, actually attempted to suppress this
heathen revelry. As guardian of the one true faith and purest of
moralities it would natually condemn dancing. Nonetheless, it
preferred to avoid direct conflict with the common people, choosing
victims instead of a higher social status: in 1778 the entire estate
of Don Pablo Olavide was confiscated by the Holy Tribunal and his
name outlawed unto the fifth generation. He was accused, amongst
other things, of permitting his servants to dance on a Sundav.
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Days when barriers fell
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Francisco de Goya
The Burial of the Sardine
(detail)
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In contrast to the women among the spectators, whose hair and
skin is largely veiled, the castanet plaver reveals naked arms and
an ample bosom. I he white mask and painted cheeks may well have
concealed a man. or a prostitute. Carnival was an excellent
opportunity for soliciting. Women wore trousers, men skirts, and
evervone went about with notices, openly insulting figures of
authority, pinned to their backs.
For a few days, the moral and social barriers of a rigidly
hierarchical society were brushed aside, together with its sexual
taboos. Periods of comparable orgiastic licentiousness, known as
bacchanalia or Saturnalia, had taken place in pre-Christian times.
The ascendant Christian Church had done what it could to control the
revelry, incorporating it into its own calendar as a short period of
roisterous behaviour leading to the 40 days of Lenten fasting before
Easter.
Like the etymology of the word "carnival" itself, the origins of the
customs associated with Carnival remain obscure. They may go back a
long way - possibly as far as the archaic and bloodthirsty fertility
rites of certain early agrarian societies. Thus the straw doll,
Pelele, who goes up in flames on the final day of the Madrid
festival, is said to be a distant descendant of certain kings who
sacrificed themselves to ensure their people had a rich harvest.
Later, their subjects were forced to take their place: Caesar wrote
of gigantic wicker figures which the Celts packed with people and
set alight. The custom of the carnival pyre continued to flourish
wherever the Celts settled, including Spain. Figures were ignited,
as in Madrid, outside the gates of the city. This was not for fear
of fire, but because the ritual, whether designed to conjure or
expel, was directed at spirits that walked in twilight zones.
A person who had committed a heinous crime or died a violent death
did not, according to popular belief, find everlasting peace, but
returned as a ghost to haunt the living. Masks and painted faces
were worn to ward them off. Death-masks with hollow eyes stare from
Goya's crowd, while the word "Mortus" - death - can be made out,
admittedly with some difficulty, on the dark banner above them.
Carnival was not, originally, a festival of joy. According to
ancient belief, the ghostly "undead" reappeared around the time of
the last new moon in winter. This coincided with the old Celtic
spring festival and, more or less, with the Christian Carnival.
The mask of the bear in the bottom left of the painting was
appropriate to the occasion. As soon as spring arrives, the bear
wakes from hibernation and staggers out of its cave. According to a
curious tradition, to whose seriousness Aristotle testifies, the
bear's first act upon appearing in this manner is to eat a laxative
herb, causing it to expel, in a fart of tempestuous proportions, all
those spirits to which it had played host during the winter months.
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The duchess boozed in seedy bars
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Francisco de Goya
The Burial of the Sardine
(detail)
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The bear 'was usually accompanied by the figure of a huntsman.
However, the moustachioed figure with lowered lance joining the
dancers may be the partner of the black bull in this folk dance. His
costume, with the black, broad-rimmed hat, leather trousers and
embroidered sleeveless waistcoat, is reminiscent of the traditional
suits worn by picadors in Goya's renderings of bullfights. The
spectators at the "Burial of the Sardine" were also those who
thronged to the arena for bullfights. Gathered around the dancers
are the "lower" orders, people who lived in the poorer quarters of
Madrid. This was "el commun", the common people, or, as those who
could afford a coach called them, "la gente de a pie": the people
who go on foot.
White mantillas gleam wherever one-looks in the crowd. Worn black in
the north, white in the south and Madrid, and accompanied by a broad
dark skirt, they were traditionally worn by Spanish women of all
classes. Among the spectators were probably housewives, servant
girls and fishwives, as well as workmen, water salesmen and grocers,
peddlers and shop-boys. Like the dancer on the right, many are
wearing a round Castilian leather cap over a knotted kerchief,
pulled down over the forehead, as well as a woollen blanket slung
across the shoulders, the poor man's apology for a winter coat.
With insecure wages, most "would have lived in primitive housing,
from which they fled whenever the opportunity arose. On official
Church holidays they swarmed outdoors onto the street, or to the
meadows by the river. They were drawn to any kind of mass
entertainment, and their love of show and glitter drew them in great
numbers to the corrida, the theatre and Church processions.
Goya achieved his first success as a young artist by painting
various forms of Spanish popular entertainment. His colourful
designs for tapestries, for instance, showed a local beauty under a
parasol, a game of blindman's buff and a Dance on the Banks of
the Manzanares. These works were painted for an aristocracy who,
determined to keep French influence at bay, were becoming nationally
self-aware and developing a taste for folk culture.
Wearing the traditional folk costume of a maja or manola,
an ordinary girl, the pampered Duchess of Alba accompanied the
artist to the corrida, or to backstreet bars of ill repute.
Her forays into this nether world allowed this lady of the highest
nobility to enjoy the thrill of danger: unbuttoned, boisterous moods
could change quickly, fights broke out without warning, knives
flashed.
Goya, painting the bloody outcome of a spontaneous uprising on
The Third of May, 1808 in Madrid,, captures something of this
violent streak in the Spanish temperament. The Spanish had borne
with equanimity the mismanagement of their economy by their own
king, Charles IV. However, when the French occupied the country and
plundered the churches, and when Napoleon took away their monarch,
there was an armed rebellion. From 1808 until 1812 they fought a
fierce guerilla war against the occupants, with torture, murder and
other atrocities. Traces of the struggle are found in Goya's work.
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From bon vivant to lone wolf
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Francisco de Goya
The Burial of the Sardine
(detail)
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One of the faces - or masks- in the crowd is particularly
conspicuous, resembling a self-portrait Goya executed in 1815 at the
age of sixty-nine, a painting approximately contemporary with The
Burial of the Sardine. With his flat, peasant's face and
deeply-set eyes, his slightly cocked head protruding from an open
collar, the artist moved with ease among the common folk of Madrid.
He was one of them - by birth, temperament and inclination.
Goya lived in Madrid for 50 years. Born the son of a gilder at
Fuendetodos in Aragon in 1746, he had come to Madrid in 1774,
achieving a certain renown through his large-scale cartoons for
tapestries. In his book "Tableau de l'Espagne moderne" the French
Baron de Bourgoing praised Goya's talent for "rendering the customs,
costumes and games of his own country in a manner that is at once
charming and true to life". As a portraitist, too, Goya was much in
demand. With his passion for hard work, Goya's genius soon brought
him success in the public sphere: in 1780 he was elected to the
Academy of San Fernando, six years later becoming a court painter.
In 1789 he was nominated "court painter to the king", a highly
coveted position, bringing him a sizeable allowance. This not only
secured his family's livelihood, but enabled the bon vivant
Goya to indulge in the kind of extravagant lifestyle that a Madrid
manolo would find appealing. Goya loved extravagance of all
kinds; he dressed as a dandy and was especially proud of his
fashionable coach. His correspondence shows him to have been an
extrovert craftsman who, besides painting, was particularly fond of
women, bullfights and hot chocolate.
Gradually, however, the uneducated artist came under the influence
of his colleagues at the Academy: intellectuals, journalists and
politicians. These men, with their dreams of a liberal Spain, had
saluted with enthusiasm the outbreak of the French Revolution.
Writing to a friend in 1790, Goya declared: "I have a mind to uphold
a certain idea and to maintain a certain dignity that is said to
belong to all men."
Two years later, Goya developed a near-fatal illness, leaving him
stone deaf and increasingly isolated. The unsophisticated bon vivant
turned into a brooding lone wolf. Though continuing his work as a
portraitist, he refused to make any more cartoons of gay, folkloric
scenes. He no longer painted for success, but in order "to occupy an
imagination mortified by the contemplation of my sufferings."
He began a series of pictures of shipwrecks, night fires and
dramatic scenes with brigands. These small pictures permitted him to
capture observations "which one cannot express ... in commissioned
works, since these do not allow free reign to fantasy and
invention." Using engravings and drawings, Goya was able to give to
each "fantasy" - each caprice, or "capricho" in Spanish - the most
vivid expression possible. In 1799 he published a series of
satirical engravings entitled Los Caprichos, castigating, in
the manner of his "enlightened" friends, all kinds of stupidity,
prejudice and superstition, and attacking the powers of oppression,
including the Church and its Inquisition, for keeping the people in
ignorance and misery.
There is a preliminary study for The Burial of the Sardine
showing the wildly dancing figures as priests, monks and nuns.
However, Goya did not dare ridicule such a powerful institution
quite so directly in the painting itself.
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Death in the guise of a bull
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Francisco de Goya
The Burial of the Sardine
(detail)
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The gathering is dominated by a sombre figure dressed in black,
whose attributes, a death-mask and horns, have personified evil in
myth and legend for thousands of years. Figures of this kind include
a creature "with a ram's head who accompanied the Celtic death god,
the scapegoat sent into the desert laden with the sins of the
Israelites, and Satan, in the guise of a black goat, celebrating
eerie mass with his witches. In the arenas of Spain, black bulls,
bursting with vigour, are vanquished by toreros who wear a
glittering "suite of light", re-enacting, whether consciously or
unconsciously, an ancient cultic ritual in which good triumphs over
evil.
Goya himself is said to have been something of a bullfighter in his
youth, and many of his works show the various stages of ritual
killing. Together with The Burial of the Sardine, his
Bullfight in a Village belongs to a group of five pictures donated
by Manuel Garcia de la Prada, a friend of the artist, to the Royal
Academy of San Fernando, where they hang to this day. Since the
paintings are not mentioned in Goya's inventory of 1812, they were
probably executed in the years that followed, a fateful period for
Spain, as well as for the artist himself.
Though the Spanish had won the war against France, Ferdinand VII,
the monarch they had "yearned for", returned in 1814 only to
reintroduce absolute rule and, with it, the Inquisition. Reaction
and the forces of oppression triumphed; "whoever stood in their way
"was purged, tortured and hanged. One of Goya's friends, the actor
Maiquez, lost his sanity in prison; others, liberals like himself,
fled the country for France. Goya, too, was summoned before the
Inquisition, probably to answer for the offence caused by his nude
painting Naked Maja. He got off lightly, even retaining his
allowance as a court painter. With the death of his wife and the
Duchess of Alba, however, the artist became inreasingly reclusive,
virtually retiring from public life altogether. The experiences and
fears of these years are reflected in the five Academy paintings:
besides The Burial of the Sardine and the Bullfight,
there is an Asylum, a procession of fanatical, bleeding
flagellants and a trial before the Inquisition.
These works mark a period of transition in Goya's oeuvre. Though
remaining a painter of folk scenes containing realistic renderings
of the customs of la gente de a pie, he began now to reveal the
terrible abyss that gaped behind the seemingly harmless activities
of the common people. His colours grew pale and ghastly, or deeply
sombre, and his figures lost that characteristic "charm" which had
once brought his work such admiration. Instead, they gesticulated
like marionettes, with faces hidden behind masks: "For all life",
according to the artist, "is a masquerade. Faces, dress and voice
are false; each one decieves the other."
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A Reflection of Horror
The Spanish Revolt against Napoleon
(K. Reichold, B. Graf)
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No one is innocent once he has seen what I have seen. I witnessed
how the noblest ideals of freedom and progress were transformed into
lances, sabres and bayonets. Arson, looting and rape, all supposed
to bring a New Order, in reality only exchanged the garrotte for the
gallows.
Francisco de Goya, from an entry in his diary, 1808
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Francisco de Goya
The Third of May, 1808: The Execution of the Defenders of
Madrid
1814
Oil on canvas, 266 x 345 cm
Museo del Prado, Madrid
This painting, one of Goya's most famous, was particularly
influential, later inspiring the war paintings of Manet and Picasso.
The canvas shows the execution by firing squad, on a mound near
Prince Pius' house, of some partisans who had taken part in the
riots of May 1808 against Joseph Bonaparte, whom Napoleon had placed
on the throne of Spain. Napoleon's fortunes took a turn for the
worse soon after these riots. The dramatic scene takes place at
night, in an lonely spot near Madrid's Royal Palace (shown as a
large, dark shape on the right in the background). Goya is
commemorating the patriots' bravery but keeps an objective, detached
view of this very modern method of slaughter. In the foreground on
the right, the firing squad is lined up; on the left, in front of
the levelled guns, are the martyrs of independence, gathered around
a figure in a white shirt and illuminated by the yellow light of the
lantern placed on the ground.
The composition is based on two opposing groups: the one on the
right is structured with straight lines that run across the
soldiers and their muskets, seen m perspective; and the one on the
left is arranged along curved lines around the man in the while shin.
In the background, the horizontal lines of the buildings
predominate. On the left, the mound and the clothes of the central
figure provide reflected light-more light comes from the lantern.
Through the darkness, two bright sources of light project dazzling
rays, exposing the expressive details of the faces and stances, and
the pool of blood that has soaked into the ground. In the
semi-darkness, stand indistinct figures in dramatic poses, and on
the ground lie the motionless figures of the executed men. streaked
with red. Lit by harsh rays of light, the rebel group emerge from
the darkness.
The central figure holds out his arms like a man crucified and
yells, showing defiance through his pose arid gesture. The bright
white and yellow stand out against the subdued colour of his
surroundings, contributing to an arresting and dramatic image. In
the foreground, a body lies with its arms outstretched.
The soldiers line up with a well-drilled military rigidity, carrying
out their orders like machines, each with the same tensed stance,
their legs apart for greater stability when the recoil comes, 'they
form a chorus of grey and broivns, which varies only in
the colours of their knapsacks. A. pale, cold light, from a source
outside the picture towards the right foreground, illuminates their
backs and flanks; this is the same light that falls on the bodies
lying on the ground to the left. The painter intended that the
viewer should only notice the firing squad after studying and
empathizing with the condemned man.
Firm brushstrokes, interspersed with touches of black, portray the
faces of the Spaniards on the centre right of this detail. Each face
has its own identity; they are like masks illustrating
despair, the whites of their eves showing terror, and their
expressions contorted with fear and horror. A smoky red is present
in the skin colour, adding to the vigorous chiaroscuro effect. Goya
has invested his composition with a great sense of freedom, and his
use of colour shows a move towards contemporary art.
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Napoleon was furious. The "damned Spanish affair" was out of
control. Early on, the power-mad Emperor of France had thought it
would be a pushover. Charles IV of Spam, a weakling at best, had
retreated into the background, leaving the government in the hands
of his wife Maria Luisa and her lover Manuel Godoy. Napoleon could
have won over the ambitious Godoy by making him viceroy of Spain.
However, his links with Napoleon, which led to a disastrous war with
Great Britain, made Godoy unpopular throughout Spain. He only barely
escaped being lynched by fleeing to France.
Napoleon, cunning as he was, had always treated Spain, an ally of
France, like a subject nation. He refused to admit defeat at the
hands of a nation occupied by his troops. Pretending to seek
reconciliation, he summoned the Spanish king and queen, with the
crown prince in tow, to France. Napoleons real intention was to keep
the Spanish royals captive and put his eldest brother, Joseph
Bonaparte, on the Iberian throne. When Napoleon's treachery became
known, a desperate revolt broke out in Spain on z May 1808.
Hopelessly outnumbered, a band of people armed with knives and
lances attacked a powerful French cavalry force in the Puerta del
Sol, a square in the heart of Madrid. Begun in blind, impotent
anger, the revolt was doomed from the outset to failure. Still it No
one has come closer to showing the naked brutality of those events
than Francisco de Goya, Court Painter to Charles IV, who had
originally welcomed Napoleons ideals. Imbued with the spirit of the
French Revolution, he had not hesitated to show the Spanish royal
family for what it was, painting them in a highly unflattering
light. However, Napoleon turned out to be the opposite of what he
had seemed to be. Although he had originally proclaimed freedom for
his own and other peoples of Europe, he revealed himself as a
despot. Perhaps his values had become corrupted and twisted. In any
case, Goya depicted the scene with a twist: his hero is the victim
who will be the next to be shot. The man in the white shirt spreads
out his arms like Christ on the Cross. The wounds on his hands are
like Christ's. His message is:
I die that you may live. It was to take five years to drive the
French out of Spain.
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EXPLORATION:
Francisco de Goya
("Life and
Work" E. L. Buchholz)
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