Black Paintings

The Black Paintings (Spanish: Pinturas negras) is the name given to a group of paintings by Francisco Goya from the later years of his life, likely between 1819–1823. They portray intense, haunting themes, reflective of both his fear of insanity and by then, his bleak outlook on humanity. In 1819, at the age of 72, Goya moved into a two-story house outside Madrid called Quinta del Sordo ("Deaf Man's Villa"). Although the house had been named after the previous owner, who was deaf, Goya was himself nearly totally deaf at the time as a result of an illness he suffered when he was 46.

After the Napoleonic Wars and the internal turmoil of the changing Spanish government, Goya developed an embittered attitude towards man. He had a first hand and acute awareness of panic, terror, fear and hysteria. He had survived two near-fatal illnesses, and grew increasingly anxious and impatient in fear of relapse. The combination of these factors is thought to have led to his production of 14 works known collectively as the Black Paintings.

Using oil paints and working directly on the walls of his dining and sitting rooms, Goya created intense, haunting works with dark 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 have ever been produced in the history of Western art."^[1] Goya did not title the paintings, or if he did, he never revealed those titles; most of their names have been provided by art historians.^[2]

The collection

Perhaps the best known of the Black Paintings is Saturn Devouring His Son. The image portrays the Roman god Saturn eating one of his children. Fearing a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him, Saturn ate each of his children upon their birth. Goya depicts this act of cannibalism with startling savagery. The background is black, while the limbs and head of Saturn seem to pop out of the shadows. Saturn's eyes are huge and bulging as if he is mad. His fingers dig into the back of his child, whose head and right arm are already consumed. Saturn is about to take another bite of the body's left arm. The only use of color besides flesh-tones is the splash of red blood covering the mutilated outline of the upper part of the partially-eaten, motionless body, which is chillingly depicted in deathly white.

Another of Goya's works from the series is known as Witches' Sabbath or The Great He-Goat (El aquelarre). Ominous and gloomy, this earth-toned illustration depicts the ancient belief that the Sabbath was a meeting of witches supervised by the devil, who took the form of a goat. The goat is painted entirely in black and appears as a silhouette in front of a coven of witches and warlocks. They have sunken eyes and horrifying features, and appear huddled together, leaning towards the devil. Only one girl seems resistant to the crowd. She sits at the far right, dressed in black. Though she does not appear involved in the ritual, she does seem to be captivated by the group's relationship to the devil.

Not all of the Black Paintings share the limited colors of the previous two examples. Fight With Cudgels shows Goya's dramatic use of different shades of blue and red as two men beat each other. While in the original version they were fighting on a meadow, the painting was damaged during the transfer, and the version at Prado has been painted over, stressing the eeriness of the fighters, unable to escape each other's blows due to their knee-deep entrapment in a quagmire. It has been taken as a premonition of the fight of the two Spains, that would dominate the following decades. Fantastic Vision also uses bright red in the garb of one of the two giant figures hovering over a group of horsemen, and also in the feather of the hat of a rifleman taking aim at these figures.

In 1823, the absolutist monarchy was re-established in Spain with Ferdinand VII, and Goya went into hiding. A year later, he fled to Bordeaux and stayed there in self-imposed exile for the remainder of his life.

The Black Paintings were transferred onto canvas in 1874 under the supervision of Salvador Martínez Cubells, a curator at the Museo del Prado. The owner, Baron Emile d'Erlanger, donated the canvases to the Spanish state in 1881, and they are now on display at the Museo del Prado.^[3]

Authenticity issues

While it is commonly believed that the Black Paintings are Goya's works, art professor Juan José Junquera has questioned their authenticity. After completing a research on the Black Paintings in order to write his homonymous book, he concluded that These are fake paintings. One of Janquera's main arguments is that the Quinta del Sordo had only one story during the time Goya lived in the house. According to the professor, Goya's purchase contract for the Quinta, the deed of transfer to his only grandchild, Mariano, and a document of the property at the time of Mariano's marriage in 1830, describe a house with only one floor. The second story was added after Goya's death and as the paintings are supposed to have been found on the walls of the two stories of the building: If the upper floors do not exist in Goya's time, of course it (the Black Paintings) is not by Goya. Janquera also states that there is no testimony by Goya’s contemporaries concerning the Black Paintings. His hypothesis is that the paintings were created by Goya's son, Javier who had full access to the Quinta and knowledge of the master's oeuvre and technique. They were possibly passed off as Goyas by Javier's son, Mariano who is described as a profligate or maybe Javier himself used the paintings (even if he did not paint them) to fetch a higher price for the house. Manuela Mena, the senior curator of 18th-century painting of Museo Nacional del Prado, speaking of this issue, has commented: We cannot send The Dog to the museum basement because it was on the apparently nonexisting second floor of the Quinta.^[4]

The Black Paintings

Notes

Bibliography

• Wilson-Bareau, Juliet. Goya's Prints, The Tomás Harris Collection in the British Museum. London: British Museum Publications, 1981. ISBN 0-7141-0789-1
• Ciofalo, John J. "Blackened Myths, Mirrors, and Memories". In: The Self-Portraits of Francisco Goya. Cambridge University Press, 2001.
• Connell, Evan S. Francisco Goya: A Life. New York: Counterpoint, 2004. ISBN 1-58243-307-0
• Cottom, Daniel. "Unhuman culture". University of Pennsylvania, 2006. ISBN 0-8122-3956-3
• Hughes, Robert. Goya. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004. ISBN 0-394-58028-1
• Licht, Fred. Goya: The Origins of the Modern temper in Art. Universe Books, 1979. ISBN 0-87663-294-0
• Stoichita, Victor & Coderch, Anna Maria. Goya: the Last Carnival. London: Reakton books, 1999. ISBN 1-86189-045-1

External links

• Francisco de Goya's "Black paintings" in the "Quinta del sordo"