Goya’s black paintings
horrified with himself as the viewer is with him. Perhaps just as horrified with himself as Goya was with himself and his fellow man. Saturn in Goya’s depiction is not animalistic, but flawed and aware of his flaws, a true melancholic like Goya. Why, Goya seems to ask, with the Christian God’s limitless power of creation, did he create man so flawed? Unlike earlier in his life, Goya now perhaps holds a far more Greco- Roman view. God’s power of creation is not limitless, his hands too are ‘ miserable ’ , and he is flawed, like his creations.
Just as Goya’s gods are imperfect, so too are his humans. The imperfection of humankind is an accepted component of Christianity. Man is tainted by the original sin of eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, but an extremely important idea to Christians is that through Christ they can be redeemed, and that one is allowed to be imperfect. Goya’s Saturn seems to deny that redemption. Here the son of God is not sent to earth, sacrificing himself for our sins; he is devoured by his father. He dies in vain, and humanity is left without their redeemer. Assuming this painting depicts Saturn devouring one of his sons, it is unusual his son is an adult. 6 It is possible, however, that his age, physique and pose mirror that of Christ on the cross. Saturn is also referenced in some of Goya’s other black paintings. Critic W.G Posèq links the goat being worshipped in The Great He-Goat to both the devil and Saturn. 7 This could suggest that Goya felt his Saturn , Peter Paul Rubens
melancholic ideals of creation and expression themselves are tainted by the devil. The work of man’s ‘ miserable ’ hands, trying in vain to replicate the flawed world around him.
The Great He-Goat, Francisco Goya
The effect of the black paintings is powerful to any viewer, but one must keep in mind the context in which Goya viewed them privately. Almost every wall of his country house was covered in murals of monumental proportion, murals which depicted a range of themes that render the life of a lone individual insignificant. Wild, cannibalistic gods and cruel fates towered over Goya, and in his isolation over him alone. In doing so they physically demonstrated the insignificance that mythology only describes.
6 Scott Morgan 2001. 7 Posèq 1999.
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