Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring his Children: The Most disturbing Painting?

Saturn Devouring his Son

Welcome to the second week of 2018's Month of Horror and for the first time we're entering the world of art. Throughout history there have been many unnerving and horrifying paintings, such as Henry Fuseli's The Nightmare depicting a demonic creature sitting on a woman's chest as she dreams or Théodore Géricault's Anatomical Pieces which depicts human body parts in vivid detail. However, there is one painting which is seen as being universally horrifying. Two years ago I was on a trip with my university's history society and with a group of friends the topic of art came up, and one of us brought up that she had seen a painting which really unnerved her. Everyone else started talking about how we all had at one point seen a painting and felt uneasy, until we realised that we all were talking about the same painting: Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring his Son. It is truly an unsettling painting and I would recommend looking at an enlarged version just to see how vivid it is. 

Saturn

Saturn is a being from Roman and Greek mythology and for the rest of this section I will go by his Greek name, Cronus. He was the son of the sky, Uranus, and the earth, Gaia, but was cast into a Hell-like world named Tartarus with his siblings. Angered, Gaia created a scythe to get her children to overthrow Uranus and Cronus decided to do so. He lay hidden and castrated his father replacing him, and as he was overthrown Uranus cursed Cronus and his siblings to forever be Titans. Cronus cast his other siblings, the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handed Giants, into Tartarus and ruled as king with his sister, Rhea, as queen (incest was common in Greek myths). However, Cronus learnt of a prophesy that one day he too would be cast down by his son so whenever Rhea gave birth he ate the infant whole. All except the sixth child. Rhea swapped the baby with a stone whom Cronus proceeded to eat, and she then hid the child on Mount Ida. The child was Zeus and when he grew up Gaia gave him a method to make Cronus sick, and he did vomiting up the stone, Poseidon, Hades, Hera, Hestia, and Demeter. With their help he released the Giants and Cyclopes from Tartarus who forged Zeus' thunderbolts, Poseidon's trident, and Hades' helmet of darkness. Zeus, his siblings, the Cyclopes and Giants overthrew the Titans and imprisoned them; some in unique ways. Atlas was forced to forever hold up the sky; Prometheus was tied to a rock for everyday an eagle to disembowel him; and Cronus' fate changes upon telling but most have him imprisoned somewhere. The story of Saturn/Cronus is an interesting one so it is natural that it has been told many different ways - in some Cronus is an almost benevolent figure who after he was overthrown becomes king of Elysium (an afterlife reserved for Gods and heroes). One of the most famous depictions is by Rubens, which may have inspired Goya's version. Cronus seems to be sucking the life out of his child in a quite aggressive way, you can see the terror on the child's face, but it cannot hold a candle to Goya's painting in terms of horror.

Rubens' Saturn

Francisco Goya

Vicente López Portaña's portrait of Goya, c.1826

Who is the man who painted one of the most terrifying painting? Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes was a Romantic painter during the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. Born in 1746 to a modest family he became a painter and eventually became a painter for the Spanish court in 1786. In 1789 he was made the official court painter. His paintings of this era were very much in line with most Romantic artists, albeit court painters were painting monarchs, the royal family, and aristocrats so doing anything too out-of-line was fairly rare. Instead painters would put hidden symbolism in the painting which any eagle-eyed observer who understood the symbolism would understand. Like many educated individuals of the time he was seen as being a man of the Enlightenment believing in increased rights for the slowly emerging bourgeoisie. Luckily for Goya the Spanish monarchs were willing to make reforms liberalising Spain - Charles III, who hired him in 1786, has been seen as a typical, and popular, reformist monarch. Then in 1789 the French Revolution broke out over a desire for reform and bread inspired by Enlightenment values, which you can read about here. The cultural elite of Europe, including figures like William Wordsworth, welcomed the revolution until it became increasingly radical by 1793. Europe's states started declaring war on Revolutionary France, including Spain, in an attempt to halt the revolution. At the same time Goya contracted a mysterious illness, lead poisoning and Ménière's disease have both been suggested, which started making him lose his hearing which in turn may have caused his mental breakdown. His paintings became increasingly pessimistic and a series called Los Caprichos showed this pessimism towards Spanish society. Painted between 1797 and 1798 it showed what Goya saw as persistent barbarity, superstition, and a decline in rationality present in Spanish society. A good example of this is The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters shown below.

El sueño de la razón produce monstruos

The years 1808-1814 were bad for Goya. The death of Josefa, his wife, in 1812 hit him hard and he had to face a serious political issue. Napoleon invaded Spain in 1808 and installed his brother on the Spanish throne; Goya had to balance being a court painter for the French monarchy and his own neutrality. Napoleon's war in Spain was particularly brutal. The fighting was continuous, guerrilla war was actually coined to describe the fighting, and French soldiers were willing to brutally massacre rebellious towns, 2,000 were killed at Tarragona alone. Normally, depictions of war highlighted the nobility or martyrdom of those who had been fighting, for a good example of this there is the 1770 depiction of James Wolfe's death during the Seven Years' War. Negative depictions of war did happen, like the 1631 depiction of the Siege of Magdeburg, but glamorising war was a lot more common. Goya did not so war positively. Painted in 1814, although started around the time of Josefa's death, were The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808 brutally show the harshness of war - Third shows civilians lining up against a wall waiting to be shot. In 1812 a Spanish court in Cadiz released the most liberal constitution of its time which was repealed when the Spanish king, Ferdinand, was restored dashing Goya's hopes of a bright future. This brings us to the Black Paintings.

El Tres de Mayo 1808

Alienated by the repeal of the Constitution of 1812 feeling that Spain was returning to a Medieval world, and alone with his hearing vanishing and mental health declining Goya retreated from the world. He bought a house on the outskirts of Madrid called La Quinta del Sordo, The Villa of the Deaf, where he lived for three years from 1819. He painted fourteen paintings directly onto the plaster of his house. All were dark, sinister, and showed an insight into the mind of a broken and alienated man. They became known as the Black Paintings. He did not tell anybody about them, did not write about them, and they only saw public light 50 years after he died. They were just for Goya. In 1824 Goya would move from Madrid to Bordeaux, possibly starting a relationship with his maid Leocardia Weiss, until his death in 1828. Meanwhile, the Black Paintings would remain in his villa until being moved to the Museo del Prado, Madrid in 1874 including one which was painted onto the plaster of his dining room, Saturn Devouring his Children...

One of the Black Paintings: Witches' Sabbath (The Great He-Goat) depicting Satan and witches

The Painting

Painted in a dining room we have one of history's most horrific paintings. Normally the Greco-Roman Gods were portrayed in idealised terms - even Rubens portrayed Saturn as a strong, muscular being. Goya did not. Instead we have a Saturn squat, skinny, and hiding in the darkness with a crazed look on his face. His mouth is just a black maw, and his eyes are wide and hysterical. Saturn isn't an idealised but malevolent being but rather a rabid animal. How he's eating his child is also very disturbing. Most myths had Saturn/Cronus eating his children whole whereas Rubens portrayed him as sucking the life out of the child. Instead Goya had him tearing apart the child. One arm has been torn off, the head has been eaten, and the other arm is about to be bitten off at the elbow. All this is accompanied by very obvious blood. If you look carefully you can see that Saturn isn't just holding the partially eaten corpse - his fingers are literally digging into the spine of the child. This brings us to another point: the child is older. In the myths Cronus ate his children as newborns and the child in Rubens' painting is still very young. Goya's victim seems to be fairly large and the YouTube video linked at the bottom suggests that this gives an image that the victim knew its devourer. We see a background in Rubens, we just get a dark mass in Goya's painting. The version we're seeing is actually a less visceral version of Goya's painting. Years of neglect in the villa weathered all the Black Paintings and the transfer to the museum caused damage so we're actually seeing a less horrific version of the painting. Apparently in the undamaged painting it was strongly implied that Saturn was deriving sexual satisfaction from consuming his victim as Karen Morden and Stephen Pulimood have suggested that remains of a partially-erect penis can be seen. Although Rubens' portrays Saturn a cold killer Goya portrays him as a rabid, mad animal.

There have been many interpretations of the painting. Only one of Goya's six children survived so it has been suggested that this was a way to explore his relationship with his son; another interpretation is that he was exploring the relationship with Leocardia as she was possibly his mistress; a third has suggested that it was a comment on youth, age and how time consumes all. Political allegory has also been suggested. Saturn serves as the Spanish crown rabidly consuming the 1812 Constitution and the Spanish people who are represented by the victim. Goya, as mentioned, lived through the French Revolution and I have seen one interpretation that this was an allegory to the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror saw many early French revolutionaries sent to the guillotine until the ones who started the Terror, including Robespierre, went sent to it themselves. Goya may be making a comment that like Saturn the revolution consumed its own. As he never intended it for public view, or apparently kept notes on the Black Paintings, we do not know what Goya intended when he painted it.

From the depths of isolation we now have a visceral painting which leaves the observer struck with unease and horror. The sources I have used are as follows:

-Evan Connell, Francisco Goya: A Life, (Berkeley, CA: Counterpoint, 2004)

-'The Black Paintings: Saturn', http://eeweems.com/goya/saturn.html, 2006, [Accessed 12/10/2018]

-James Voorhies, 'Francisco de Goya (1746-1828) and the Spanish Enlightenment', https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/goya/hd_goya.htm, [Accessed 12/10/2018]

-Nerdwriter1, 'The Most Disturbing Painting', https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g15-lvmIrcg&index=30&t=0s&list=LLH1rGhuPAiCD64J8Zojyncw, 1 March 2018, [Accessed 12/10/2018]

Thank you for reading and I hope you found it interesting. All this month we'll be looking at horror related items for 2018's Month of Horror. It is Black History Month in the UK and everyday for October on our Facebook we're briefly discussing historical events, movements and people related to black history. For future blog updates please see our Facebook or catch me on Twitter @LewisTwiby.