The Haunting World of Black Paintings of Francisco Goya

The text below is the excerpt of the book Francisco Goya (ISBN: 9781783104178), written by Sarah Carr-Gomm, published by Parkstone International.

In February 1819 Francisco Goya bought a house in a quiet rural location near the hermitage of San Isidro and with a fine view of Madrid over the River Manzanares. Known already, coincidentally, as ‘La Quinta del Sordo’ (‘the deaf man’s house’), here Goya’s friends would gather, according to the artist’s early biographer, Laurent Mathéron, “so that all the arts conspired to delight the spirit and the senses.” Following his near-fatal illness in the winter of 1819 Goya, aged seventy-three, began to decorate the house with a series known as The Black Paintings.

On the walls of two rooms of approximately the same large size (4.5 metres x 9 metres), one above the other, Francisco Goya painted large compositions in oil, in rapid brushstrokes, directly on to the plastered walls. These were transferred to canvas in 1873 and now hang in the Prado Museum. A reconstruction of their original arrangement depends on an unreliable inventory of 1820, when titles were given to the paintings. The paintings are populated with sinister figures and, because of their extraordinary visionary nature, the meaning of the works have been variously interpreted; traditionally the paintings have been seen as an investigation into the behaviour of mankind, in an attempt to understand the evil that had troubled his country.

Alternatively, Goya’s intentions in making these paintings may have been altogether less serious; they may have been simply a response to the new European fashion for violence, mystery and the supernatural. They were meant to be seen in near darkness, by the light of a candle, and guests may have been invited to be entertained by the artist’s invention. This interpretation would accord with Mathéron’s recollections of light-hearted social gatherings at Goya’s home.

The paintings in the ground-floor room probably included Saturn Devouring his Children, Judith, The Pilgrimage to St Isidro, The Witches’ Sabbath, La Leocadia and Two Old Men. Saturn Devouring his Children shows Saturn off balance and with a crazed expression as he performs the monstrous act; according to legend, once the ancient god had been warned that he would be ousted from his kingdom by his son, he devoured his offspring as soon as they were born. Equally perverse, Judith, represents the Apocryphal saviour of the Israelites who slew Holofernes, the enemy of her people. She is not depicted as the beautiful widow of biblical account, but as a woman clearly capable of murder.

The Pilgrimage to St Isidro covered one wall of the room. Although it echoes Goya’s earlier composition, The Meadow of St Isidro, in this painting Francisco Goya makes a mockery of the happy occasion. From a long procession, a mass of figures emerges off centre out of a nocturnal landscape. Their distorted faces seem threatened by madness, and they huddle together as if frightened of some dark force. Facing The Pilgrimage, The Witches’ Sabbath not to be confused with the earlier painting of the same title made for the Duchess of Osuna reveals the exaggerated fear and awe on the faces of the participants in a demonic ritual.

Near the door of the room were probably Two Old Men and La Leocadia. Leocadia Weiss was Goya’s housekeeper and companion and was related to the Goicoechea family into which Goya’s son Javier had married. She had two sons from her previous marriage and Goya may have been the father of her daughter, Maria del Rosario Weiss, born in 1814. Her tranquil pose may have been intended to contrast with the violent action of the Judith, which stood opposite.

The upper room probably housed The Cudgel Fight, The Fantastic Vision, The Holy Office and The Dog. In The Cudgel Fight figures come to blows with blunt-ended sticks. They sink up to their knees in the ground, in what may be an allusion to the futility of the Spanish civil war or the war with France.

It has been suggested that the huge rock featured in The Fantastic Vision refers to the Rock of Gibraltar, the refuge of Spanish liberals between 1815 and 1833. Francsico Goya presents dramatic contrasts of scale. Two giant figures hover over a tiny group of horsemen while, on the right, soldiers with rifles aim in their direction and create a feeling of panic and fear.

The eccentric group in The Holy Office expresses terrors shared by everyone. In spite of the distortions, the diabolical faces and the violence, Goya’s figures are credible and are clearly human. Like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, published a year earlier, in 1818, Goya shows how monsters are created by man.

Goya was worried that his paintings might incriminate him and, with the restoration of Ferdinand VII to absolute rule in 1823, Goya assigned the Quinta del Sordo to his grandson, Mariano. Early the following year Goya went into hiding and requested leave to go to France on the pretext of taking a cure. On 24 June he arrived at the house of his friend, the playwright Leandro Fernández de Moratin, in Bordeaux. Goya settled in Bordeaux, living in self-imposed exile among representatives of liberal Spain, until his death at the age of eighty-two.

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