Francisco Goya: The Change Agent
A life of change......
For several months now, I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on Goya. Of course, just as I prepared to get down to business, we have been saddled with “the great Goya controversy” in American politics. Please understand that the controversy is about black beans, while my subject is Francisco Goya, the iconic Spanish painter. 😊 Furthermore, I am so grateful to my friends and partners Fatima and Enrique in Madrid, for making a special video just for us on guess what topic….yes…Goya! So let’s get down to business.
The period of The Enlightenment (late 18th and early 19thCenturies) was seismic for Western culture. The emergence of ideas that competed with long-standing institutional dogma, created an era of violent change closely tied to our own American Revolution and certainly with the iconic French Revolution. These ideas (related also to the overlapping Scientific Revolution) included the value of reason, as well as the idea that while God exists, he does not have the same day-to-day interests in the fabric of society that had been assumed.
The Family of Carlos IV (1801)
This was the world of intellectual upheaval that Goya lived in, and his art reflects this change. He is known as the last of the masters and the first of the moderns. In other words, he stood on the shoulders of the great pre-enlightenment Spanish masters such as Velazquez, building upon their technical and aesthetic approaches. But although he was employed by the court for much of his life, he was never a spiritual slave. One of the paintings that Fatima shares in the video below is the court painting of Charles IV and his family (1801). The strange nobility of this iconic piece is not in the royal superiority of the subjects, but rather in their plain-looking features. These were not extraordinary figures. They were, at best, well dressed ordinary human beings.
It was not simply this slowly diminishing sphere of the sacred that Goya’s work reflected. More ominously, it was this world in which God might not be as present as we thought. We see this in his reflections on the Peninsular War and the French atrocities. We see this in his Black Paintings, where he reflects on his internal struggles against a sometimes-meaningless existence. While we normally associate the enlightenment with progress, we seldom stop to think about the price we pay by abandoning the systems of belief that provide relative comfort and stability.
“The 3rd of May” commemorating Spanish resistance to Napoleon's armies during the French occupation
Lastly, before I turn things over to Fatima, I would mention that Goya was a bit of a rebel by nature, and might have gotten himself into quite a bit of trouble, had it not been for the changing backdrop of ideas in Europe. (In fact, he was eventually kicked out of court.) Spain was always slow to adjust to new ways, and Goya used his influence to encourage Spain to keep in step with the rest of Europe. Regarding his own series of etchings, Los Caprichos, Goya says that “…from amongst the innumerable foibles to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance and self-interest have hallowed, he (actually Goya referring to himself in the 3rd person) has selected those subjects which he feels to be more suitable for satire”. In other words, he made no effort to hide his intent to instigate.
Now I will stop my babbling and turn this over to my friend Fatima. She and her husband Enrique are both scholars and explorers. If I assist you in planning a trip to Spain, it is likely that I will recommend them to you. Their company “Explore the Unknown” focuses on rich historical and cultural interpretive guide services in Madrid and beyond. They will also soon be publishing their own book on the history of Madrid. I will surely review it here on my blog.
Click here for video!
Thanks again to Fatima and Enrique for sharing Goya's Madrid with us. As always, please stay safe and look at for the next Iberian Compass newsletter two weeks from today!
