by G. Fernández - theartwolf.com
Goya is an enigma. In the whole History of Art few figures are as complex for the study as the brilliant artist born in 1746 in Fuendetodos, Spain. Enterprising and indefinable, a painter with no rival in all his life, Goya was the painter of the Court and the painter of the people. He was a religious painter and a mystical painter. He was the author of the beauty and eroticism of the Maja desnuda and the creator of the explicit horror of The executions of May 3rd. He was an oil painter, a fresco painter, a sketcher and an engraver. And he never stopped his metamorphosis.

Due to this, most of the biographies that try to cover the entire oeuvre by Goya inevitably fall in the indecision and the unwarranted suppositions. But that is not the objective of this brief essay, in which I am going to try to take an impossible walk by the destroyed "Quinta del Sordo" (Ville of the deaf), the original home of the "black paintings" shown today in the Prado Museum .

Very few we know today of this Quinta and the reasons that took to Goya to decorate it with so peculiar paintings after acquiring it in 1819. The house, located in the outskirts of Madrid , was a solid construction of two floors to which Goya added to a new wing for the kitchen and other dependencies. The house had two main rooms - measuring 9 xs 4.5 meters in plant- located each one in a different floor. We also know that these rooms included a decoration of rural subjects previous to their purchase by the artist.

So, why Goya decided to change this glad decoration for the restlessness and horror of "black paintings"? Was the desperation after the War? Not probable. These paintings were initiated one decade after the end of the War, and Goya had already made its particular "pictorial unloading" with The disasters of the War . Was its already almost total deafness? The serious disease that he suffered in 1819? The reasons for this decision are still unknown. What we do know, despite the damage suffered when transferred this frescos to canvas, are the results.

First of all, we have to say that - despite the dark fame that carries these paintings- not all these creations were gloomy or terrible. It's true that today almost everybody associates the "black paintings" to Saturn devouring his son or to the ruthless Duel with cudgels , but in the set we found pieces in which the irony flock any vestige of horror - Two women and a man- or even the beautiful figure of the Leocadia, elegant and serene despite of her mourning. In addition, the rooms, with abundant windows opened to the Madrilenian countryside, had to receive an important illumination, far from being the dark place that many historians seem to suggest.

The presence of these windows in the walls organized the distribution of the frescoes in the rooms. Whereas the ground floor hall had two windows in each one of the large walls, the upper floor hall had only one. This allowed Goya to create enormous compositions between the windows of the lower room; whereas in the upper room he was limited to crate two smaller size frescoes in each side of the window. In the smaller walls, to each side of the door or window, and even above them, Goya painted smaller compositions that were somehow related to its larger sisters.

Two great programs dominated the lower room. In the first place, A pilgrimage to San Isidro appeared accompanied by Judith and Holofernes and the Two monks. That carnival of tortured faces that is A pilgrimage to San Isidro has been interpreted in two different ways: first, like a twisted vision of the popular Madrilenian celebration that took place few miles ago from the Quinta. But there is also a theory that relates it to the dark Roman celebration of the Saturnalia, dedicated to the Roman God Saturn. Two monks can talk about to the unfortunate life of those who found themselves exiled and impoverishing after the War. On the other hand, the Judith and Holofernes make reference to a Biblical scene very resorted in History of the Art. Peculiarly, this painting does pair with Saturn devouring his son , in which also a mutilated body is shown to us.

Opposed to these paintings was located The Great he-goat (witches Sabbath). This was perhaps the most important painting of the entire Villa, although when it was transferred to canvas it lost a great part in his right end (what causes a strange asymmetry between the young sitting girl and the Great he-goat). The painting looks not exactly terrible, but disturbing and even parodic. It's quite suggestive to compare this work with the one of the same subject that Goya painted in 1798 ( Madrid , Lazaro Galdiano Museum ), in which the figure of the he-goat, looking directly to the observer, is the unique protagonist of the composition, which does not happen here. This fresco was flanked by the terrible Saturn devouring his son, perhaps the most popular of the "black paintings", still used nowadays as a symbol of the horror and madness.

It's quite possible that Goya knew the version of the Saturn painted by Rubens in 1636 ( Madrid , Prado Museum ) but he decides to separate from any mythological symbol or interpretation to focus in the expressivity of the face, reflecting the cruelty of the act. This expressionist foretaste is nowadays the painting that more frightened reactions causes in the visitors of the Prado Museum .

Opposed to the explicit horror of the Saturn is the serenity of the Leocadia (also called A manola: Doña Leocadia Zorrilla ), beautiful and keeping the composure in spite of his more than possible relation with the person who rests in the tomb located to her side. It's possibly that between this painting and the Two monks, and located above the door, was old man and old women eating a soup.

In the upper room we found seven paintings. On the one hand, next to the door, single and abandoned, we found The dog . This is perhaps the most enigmatic painting of the entire Quinta. It depicts a dog, totally hidden with the only exception of his head, in the middle of an ochre background. Nothing else it's said to us about the protagonist or the meaning of this fresco. Where is that dog? To where or at what it is watching? Sinks, or on the contrary it shows its head with caution, afraid of which we are not able to intuit? There are infinity of interpretations of this painting, associating to the dog to the infernal figure that guides the dead souls to the Hell, and suggesting it as a symbol of the abandonment and the neglect.

And as when talking about Goya is impossible to maintain an entire objective point of view, I will reveal that The dog is the work that fascinates me more of all the "black paintings".

In the great wall located next to this painting were two great frescoes: Fantastic vision (Asmodea) and Procession of the Hole Office . Asmodeo was in mythology a killer demon that Goya represents - we ignored the reason- as a woman who partially covers her face, while floats in the sky carrying the horrified body of a man. Procession of the Hole Office , on the other hand, is a brave and ironic critic to this infamous Court.

In front of these two great paintings were other two: the terrible Duel with cudgels , and the enigmatic The Fates . The first of them could easily dispute to the Saturn the title of most terrible of all the "black paintings", but in this one we did not find the almost liberating touch of knowledge that the scene is fantastic or mythological: this duel is real, between two anonymous personages, and it will be only solved by the inevitable death of one of them. This work has been interpreted as an allegory of the Civil War. Contrasting with these two figures tragically anchored to the Earth, the figures of The Fates float in the air, as do those in the Asmodea , located - not by chance- just opposite to this painting.

In one of the smaller walls of the upper room Goya created two paintings of vertical format, smaller in size than the previous ones. Entitled Reading and Women laughing , they are less terrible, although chromatically darker, than their companion paintings.

In 1824, Goya left the "Quinta del Sordo" and started off for Bordeaux , tired of the Spanish society and reality. "Who cannot extinguish the fire of its house separates from it", he wrote shortly before going away. The Villa was sold and passed through diverse hands, putting in danger the integrity of the paintings, but in 1874, the then proprietor of the Quinta, the Baron d' Erlanger, ordered to the curator of the Prado Museum , Salvador Martinez Cubells, to transfer the frescoes to canvases. The paintings were exhibited in the Universal Exhibition of Paris of 1878 and later they were donated to the Prado Museum , where they are conserved nowadays.

NOTES ABOUT THE TOUR

We have taken into consideration the limited information we have about the specifications of the Quinta (dimensions of the rooms, situation of the paintings.) We know that the walls were decorated with floral motifs, but -as we don't have a photography or a reliable depiction- we have chosen a neutral background. We have include no furniture, and the natural light could be quite different.

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