Francisco de Goya's Black Paintings are fucking nuts. Like if you look at Goya's other work, there's plenty of darkness, after all, one of his his other most famous paintings, The Third Of May 1808, depicts a firing squad executing innocent civilians during the Peninsular Wars.
He also did an entire series called The Disasters Of War, which were stark presentations of the brutality of war. Goya understood violence. Understood that deep dark part of us that comes out when we are engaged in battle with a foreign power, or even with our own country. His artwork prior to the Black Paintings contains plenty of dark, powerful imagery... But that wasn't all Goya was great at. He also painted the Maja.
While I'm using La maja vestida because Tumblr will probably have me drawn and quartered if I post La maja desnuda, that one's the important one. It was one of the first Western paintings to depict nudity outside of a religious or mythological context and without negativity. It was an unabashed depiction of the female form without any of the usual artistic justifications of the time. It was also one of the first to depict female pubic hair without negative connotations behind that, since usually pubic hair was only presented in artwork of women seen as "unclean" or "immoral", such as prostitutes. Yes, even back in the day, there was that weird anti-pube thing. Goya just... Painted a nude woman. No justification. Just a nude without any of the usual justification.
He nearly got tried by the Spanish Inquisition over it, albeit in the years their power was waning, but that's a story for another day.
Goya was capable of incredible things. His painting of Manuel Godoy is a brilliant piece of subtle, intricate artistic satire, his painting of Charles IV and his family is flattering without being absurd, still presenting them as people, his fresco Adoration In The Name Of God might just be my favorite religious fresco ever.
And of course there's The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters.
Anyway my point is that Goya's artwork was intensely varied, even to the end of his career. One of the man's latest self-portraits (well, self-caricatures) depicts him as an elderly man, thick beard and head of hair, two canes, long robe, and has a single phrase written above him.
"Aun aprendo". I am still learning.
But the Black Paintings are what people know most about Goya, and yeah. I'm with you, the Black Paintings are nuts. They depict the mental state of a man whose mental state was growing darker and darker over the prior three decades.
You see, Goya went deaf because of an unspecified illness. His artwork's increasing darkness following this is often seen as a reflection of his increasing insular, isolated state, the worsening of symptoms such as tinnitus, loss of balance, all led to him becoming more withdrawn. It might've been Ménière's disease. It might've been lead poisoning. We don't know.
What we do know is that Goya proceeded to paint the Black Paintings directly on the walls of his home, the Quinta del Sordo (The House Of The Deaf Man, named that prior to Goya even owning it) due to a conscious decision to withdraw from the public eye following the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy and the rejection of the Spanish constitution of 1812, and started to suppress his own works. The Black Paintings weren't meant to be seen. They were the artwork of a man who saw his country start to turn towards the old, bad ways once again, drifting closer to medievalism than it had previously, at the same time he was becoming more and more isolated due to his deafness, his fear of old age and madness creeping up on him, and so he decided to get his despair out through art. Saturn Devouring His Son might be what we all know, but the Black Paintings are 14 paintings, not just one.
And here are a few of my favorites.
I can't post any more images but I hope you enjoyed this dip into Goya's career and I hope you look into it more deeply yourselves, because there is an incredible amount of power in his work. The Disasters Of War is deeply upsetting even to this day. The man had power behind his art and he knew how to wield it.
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