Francisco Jose de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), one of the greatest Spanish painters, with a

career spanning 60 years, has been dubbed both the last of the old masters and the father of
modern art. He began painting in the late Baroque period, creating frescos in the Rococo tradition
and was influenced by Neoclassicism. He is categorized as a painter in the Romantic tradition.
However, one is hard pressed to determine what style in which to fit his darkest work. He was
highly ambitious and was not above making work chiefly designed to please his audience and
advance his career. Having established himself as a popular court painter, he would go on to
create on the walls of his house a series of deeply disturbing murals dubbed "The Black Paintings,"
a significant departure from the work that made him highly successful in his lifetime and not
intended to be viewed by anybody but himself and maybe his closest friends.

The Black Paintings are so different from his previous work that Juan Jose Junquera, an art history
professor at Complutense University in Madrid, claims that Goya did not even paint them (New
York Times). Close inspection and comparison in terms of the subject matter and certain unique
traits of the artist's style are enough to refute such a notion in this author's opinion. Nevertheless,
that the notion has even been entertained indicates just how much the artist's style changed.

In fact, the Black Paintings were the natural outcome of Goya's life. The troubled times in which he
lived, the Age of Enlightenment that shaped his thinking, and his personal tragedies all combined
to give his last major art a raw brutality which was never before seen in his work or anybody else's.
If he had painted nothing else, these murals alone would have been enough to usher in modern
art as we know it today. Of course, Goya was prolific and began as a rather conventional
journeyman which makes his evolution into the man who created the Black Paintings all the more
interesting and offers insight into just what goes into the creation of great art.

What could have lead to such a severe departure in the style of a opportunistic painter who had
been appointed Painter to the King (Charles IV), the most prestigious position a painter in Spain
could hope to achieve?

The Age of Enlightenment was the ideology that allowed Goya's work to flourish and provided the
intellectual underpinning for his art (Schickel 51). Up until the 1770's, Goya's education, which
consisted of copying the styles of other painters, was without direction, however skillful he was
becoming. His initial training was at the hands of a respected but mediocre artist, Jose Luzan y
Martinez, local to Sargossa, the town in which Goya lived as an adolescent (Schickel 15). He then
traveled to Italy to continue his studies and absorbed the Neoclassical tradition. He returned to
Sargossa and painted church frescoes in the decorative Rococo style (Webmuseum). The ideas and
beliefs of his friends, patrons, and mentors who were the leading figures of the Spanish
Enlightenment can be summarized as that what was natural and realistic was best and that the
intellectuals and artists of this movement had the duty to explore and define nature with the
utmost precision. The eventual result in his art was a desire to speak the truth, no matter how
brutal it would be.

Anton Raffael Mengs was the prominent painter of his time and then director of the San Fernando
Royal Academy of Fine Arts. in 1774 Charles III appointed him and his assistant Francisco Bayeu to
overhaul the Royal Tapestry Factory at Santa Barbara. They hired Bayeu's brother, Ramon and his
brother-in-law, Goya, to create paintings, or cartoons, which weavers then copied in silk and wool
(Waldron 23).

Cartoons of this sort were large works painted with oils on canvas but they also needed to be
relatively simple to copy. In keeping with the Enlightenment, Charles III asked Mengs to eschew
depictions of mythology or the Bible and instead illustrate everyday life in Spain. Goya painted
brightly colored cartoons of hunting, picnics, and children playing. He portrayed the majos, the
swaggering, fashionably dressed tough young working-class men and the majas, their beautiful
tempestuous female companions. He painted the bar fights, drunks, gypsies, cardsharps,
washerwomen, and other "real" aspects of the seamier side of life (Waldron 24-25).

In 1778, he was also immersing himself in the paintings of Velazquez in the king's art collection,
which he was able to access as a painter for the tapestry factory. He copied 16 of them as a series
of etchings. As one can see in his etching of the famous painting Las Meninas, they are not so
much perfect replicas as loving homages. The dwarf woman in Velazquez's painting seems more
prominent in Goya's etching and shares some facial traits with the twisted semi human faces that
he would later paint. Goya found in the work of the 17th century painter an unflinching eye for
nature and humanity that he did not see in his contemporaries, such as Mengs who exclusively
painted in the more staid, prim Neoclassical tradition. In effect, ahead of his time, Velazquez was
following the tenets of the Enlightenment and became Goya's primary influence and teacher.
Goya was to gain a newfound technical skill as a result of his labors. His style became looser and
more spontaneous and more his own (Webmuseum).

Being a tapestry painter was steady, honorable work and would certainly have fulfilled the
ambitions of many fine artists, but not Goya. Mengs and Bayeu regarded him as an upstart who
needed to be kept in check and so it would take him a long time to rise to royal favor . In 1779
Goya was able to pay a visit to Charles III and was delighted at having the opportunity to kiss his
hand. Nevertheless, he was turned down for the position of Court Painter, Instead he finally was
accepted in the Royal Academy in 1780 by copying a study for a painting of the Crucifixion by
Bayeu (who based his study on a Mengs painting). Christ on a Cross bears little resemblance to his
tapestry paintings or in fact anything else that Goya painted. It was a utilitarian work designed to
secure a position in a prestigious institution (Schickel 55).

In 1780 Goya had a falling out with his brother-in-law over what we would today term creative
differences. Bayeu was commissioned to paint three domes of Cathedral of Our Lady of El Pilar in
Saragossa. Goya and his brother were to assist him. Bayeu did not like Goya's designs for the
Virgin Mary as the Queen of Martyrs. Goya with his newfound prestige did not appreciate Bayeu's
criticism (Waldron 30). The passage of time has determined that Goya was the greater painter but
in 1780 Bayeu had the respect and seniority. Brother Salcedo, a friar who was called in to mediate
the dispute, persuaded him to accede to Bayeu's changes (Schickel 57). Goya was nevertheless
very bitter.

Goya reached the pinnacle of his popular and financial success when he was named Deputy
Director of Painting at the Spanish Royal Academy in 1785. It was through this appointment that
he was able to secure commissions from the wealthy people of Spain. A year later he was
appointed Painter to the King, the most prestigious title a Spanish artist could want at that time.
His initial portraits were flattering and worshipful (Schickel 60) but increasing skill and confidence
would begin to imbue them with greatness. The portrait of the Count of Floridablanca (1783)
shows the painter's desire to please and is perhaps not as revealing as his famous painting of the
family of Charles IV (1799). Whether the latter was meant to be insulting and sources differ, it is at
the very least disarmingly honest, depicting the family as they are with utter candor.

At the end of 1792 Goya was struck by a severe illness (possibly accompanied by a nervous
breakdown, depending on what one reads) which left him completely deaf. What the actual illness
was is not known for sure, possibly syphilis or polio, but the effect it would have on his painting is
unmistakable. It was in the ensuing years that he began to use his art as a jaundiced commentary
of mankind. He also became given to creating works that invoked the ire of the Inquisition.

In 1799 Goya published the Caprichos, a series of etchings satirizing human follies and weakness,
and a clear harbinger for the Black Paintings. Within fifteen days of their release they are
withdrawn from public sale. It would take a formal order from King Charles IV to prevent Goya
from being called before the Inquisition. It is likely that only his connections to royalty saved Goya
from any actual punishment.

In 1808 Goya created The Third of May. This famous painting clearly delineates a major step in his
evolution into a more expressionistic painter. The surface is ragged. Fine details are of little
importance. The lighting and the raw emotion are dominant. The soldiers, about to shoot the last
standing men who are in abject terror, are faceless. War is not redeeming or glorious. It is only
stark brutality. The public would not see it for 40 years (Guardian Unlimited).

In the years 1810 to 1814, he created a series of etchings entitled The Disasters of War which
recorded the horrors of the Napoleonic invasion though they would not be published until 1863
(Webmuseum). Perhaps Goya thought it in his best interests not to display them lest he face
punishment from the warring powers buffeting Spain during his time but the artist in him still
needed to create them.

Ferdinand VII became the ruler of Spain in 1814. Unlike his father, Charles IV, he was not so
enamored of Goya's work. And while Goya retained the title of Court Painter, it was in name only.
The bulk of his subsequent work was to be done outside the confines of royal portraiture. More
significantly, Ferdinand was a reactionary and absolutist ruler. He abolished the liberal
constitution and the hated Inquisition rose with new vigor under his auspices. He erased whatever
minor advances Spain was able to gain from the Enlightenment that was embracing the rest of
Europe. For Goya and other students of the Enlightenment, his regime was cruelly disillusioning.

Goya had long suffered personal misfortunes in his lifetime besides losing his hearing. Only one of
his seven children, Javier, survived beyond infancy. His lifelong friend and correspondent Martin
Zapater died in 1803. His wife Josefa Bayeu died in 1812. Illness struck him again in 1819. Were it
not for his physician Dr. Arrieta, he would have died.

From 1819 to 1824 Goya lived in isolation on the outskirts of Madrid in a house known as the
Quinta del Sordo (Deaf Man's House), which he had bought from another deaf man. He restored
the house, enlarged it, and planted an orchard and vines on its land. It was on the walls of two
rooms in this house that he created The Black Paintings, which got their name from Juan de la
Encina in the book Goya en zig-zag published in 1928 (Mariam 4). Their prevalent color and
predominating mood make it an appropriate moniker. Goya himself did not name them as a group
or individually. Nor did he give any explanation for them.

They were named separately in the inventory made of them after his death: Before he moved to
Bordeaux, Goya gave the house to his grandson Mariano. After Goya died, Mariano transferred
the house to his father Javier. 1854, the year that Javier died, a Catalan business man named
Narcisco Bruguera, who was interested in buying the house, commissioned an architect Manuel
Garcia to perform a thorough inventory of the house (Mariam 5). This inventory would later prove
essential to art historians. Depending on how one interprets the work, the names may seem
arbitrary but they are useful in distinguishing one painting from another when discussing them.

The artist created them by painting with oils on polished and painted plaster, a technique which
has not endured well with time. The range of colors used is narrow, limited to black, ochre, brown
and grey with the occasional blood red, pale blue, and white. It is also interesting to note that he
painted them upon already existing murals more in keeping with Goya's previous cheerier style,
though he did include them in the background of some of the
newer paintings (Mariam 8).

The painting Saturn shows the Roman god of time and

agriculture, devouring one of his children, lest they should rise
up an usurp him. It is a raw scene, with the ancient god's eyes
bulging maniacally as he tears into the flesh of a small bloody
body. The original image showed Saturn with an erect penis,
which Salvador Martinez Cubells, the restorer of the Prado
Museum in 1874, charged with transferring the paintings to
canvas, censored (Mariam 14).
 In the Procession of the Inquisition, a
parade of huddled figures, mostly bent
old women with white scarves around
their heads it would seem, wend their
way around a mountain. The sky is pale
blue with white clouds but the people
are in darkness. As is typical of most of
the figures in these paintings, their faces
are distorted and not completely
human.

Some historians interpret the

painting dubiously titled Two
Old Men Eating as of two old
women. Others say it is
Death eating with a witch.
Both figures appear to be
pointing toward something
unnamed, perhaps
something in the house
where they were originally
situated. In one of his earlier
portraits of the Duchess of
Alba Goya painted his subject
pointing to a phrase "Solo Goya" (only Goya) written on the
ground.

The title of this painting, "Judith and Holofernes," refers to

Chapter 13 of the Book of Judith, the story of a rich young
widow who saves her people by seducing, stabbing, and
decapitating the general Holofernes who was sent by the
Assyrian king Nebudchanezzar to suppress rebel communities
within his empire (Mariam 14). Like many men of his time
Goya no doubt had some anxiety and fear about the opposite
sex. An earlier telling painting entitled The Dummy (1791-
1792) shows four girls bouncing a dummy on a sheet, a
metaphor of the way women toy with women. The subject
matter in the Black Paintings often seems to be grim
conclusions to earlier themes in Goya's work.
 Leocadia, shown above, was Goya's
housekeeper at the time, and possibly
his lover, a scandal as she was married
with three children (Mariam 18). Some
historians argue that the portrait was of
Duchess of Alba, who also may or may
not have been Goya's lover. The woman
is dressed in the typical garb of the
working girls of Madrid. She is resting
against a rock that dominates the
painting and which some have said
represents Goya's tomb. With her
cheeks tinged pink and her shoes
peeking daintily from under her dress
the female is the most delicately
executed of the paintings. The image is
nevertheless solemn. While it is
informative to discuss the paintings
individually, art historians universally agree that the Black Paintings are to be viewed as a whole,
undivided work.

The Witches'
Sabbath or The
Great He-Goat
depicts a group of
distorted, barely
human figures
gathered in a
circle presided
over by a
silhouetted figure
with the head of a
male goat. On the left outside of the circle is an old woman. In the center of the painting next to
the goat head is a man, presumably an assistant to him. On the far right is a young woman,
possibly waiting to be initiated into the coven of witches.

Again, the subject matter is not new. In 1798 Goya painted The Witches' Sabbath for the Duke and
Duchess of Osuna, as well as five other canvases on the subject of witchcraft (Schickel 84) . Again,
a figure with the body of a male goat presides over circle of devotees, this time in the rite of child
sacrifice. Nevertheless, the older painting looks positively pastoral in comparison to the mural on
his wall. The background in the latter painting is a plain dark green with no other detail to soften
the gloomy atmosphere.
 In the San Isidro Pilgrimmage
Goya shows a long night-time
procession of poor villagers.
The huddled, tightly packed
group in the foreground sings
lamentably to the
accompaniment of a
guitarist. Figures following
behind are shrouded in black.
A figure on the far right is set
off from the rest of the
group. He appears to be exhausted or drunk or despairing, though he might also be singing.

Once again, the subject matter is reminiscent of an earlier painting. In 1788, when Goya was a
tapestry designer he created a cartoon entitled the Festival of San Isidro (the cartoon was never
made into a tapestry), a depiction of yearly festival in which Spaniards gather on May 15 to honor
the city's patron saint, a peasant in the 12th Century whose plow uncovered a stream. Some 400
years later, the water from that stream cured a mysteriousillness of a young prince who later
became the powerful monarch Philip II. The cure lead to Isidro's canonization (Schickel 18-19).

The earlier painting is festive and brightly colored. The later painting is a twisted, forlorn mockery
of a festival. Since Goya did not name the later painting one has no certain way of knowing that he
was depicting a pilgrimage in San Isidro but it is interesting to note the contrasting moods of two
depictions of vast crowds of people on a wide landscape. The fact that the figures in the later
painting are singing allows one to conclude that a celebration of some sort is occurring, even if it is
a despondent one.

The San Isidro Pilgrimage was painted over an earlier light-filled landscape. One wonders, in this
case as well in the cases of all of the Black Paintings, if Goya had begun to create a lighter painting
and changed his mind because Ferdinand VII's absolutist regime took over Spain after a brief
constitutional rule.

Whether or not this painting entitled Two Monks is of two monks is

up for debate. It is equally likely to be a painting of an old bearded
man leaning on a cane with a demon whispering in his ear. A
common subject in Goya's oeuvre is insanity represented as demons
hovering over men, as in the sinister owls in the etching The Sleep of
Reason Produces Monsters.
 The starkest, sparest, most "modern" of the Black Paintings is
the Drowning Dog. This image is merely a mournful head of a
dog peaking from the bottom of the towering empty space.
Whether or not the dog in indeed drowning or even if Goya
had planned to add a hunter to accompany the dog is
immaterial when one appreciates, again, the heavy, sad mood
of the painting. Art scholars have suggested that the dog
represents Cerberus, the guardian of the gates of the
underworld (Mariam 24). More important than any
iconographic references is the mood evoked in a person

viewing the painting.

Perhaps the eeriest of the Black

Paintings and the most difficult
to analyze, Asmodea shows two
figures, one a female shrouded in
red, hovering in the air over a procession of people and horses. They seem to be floating toward a
fortress or city on the top of a mesa. On the far right a soldier is aiming his gun at them. The color
is lighter, a pale yellow ochre. The mesa is a pale blue.

In the bible Asmodeo is the name of the devil who murders the husbands of Sarah who later
becomes the wife of Tobias. Asmodea is the female form of the name. The painting may also be a
reference to the novel El diablo cojuelo by Luis Velez de Guevara, a novel which depicts Asmodeo
as a flying devil (Mariam 26). The painting brings to mind Goya's series of engravings, the
Disparates, which depict sinister flying in two images, one of a figure on a flying creature that is
part bird and part horse (Disparate Volante or Flying Folly) and one of people wearing wings
(Modo de Volar or A Way of
Flying).

Atropos or The Fates is

monochromatic, so limited is
its color range. Four figures
hover above a stream flanked
by trees. The old man on the
left holds a small figure
which resembles a demon.
The next on slightly
resembles an ancient Greek and holds a magnifying glass. The figure on the right with his back
facing the viewer holds a pair of scissors. These three are the fates, Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos
(Mariam 24). In the middle of the group is a bound man who presumably shows that it is
impossible to escape one's destiny. He looks directly at the viewer of the painting.

The landscape was painted

earlier and is reminiscent of
earlier works.

In Duel with Cudgels two

peasants battle each other
with sticks as they seem to
sink into a mire in a murky
landscape. The face of the
man on the left is bloodied. It
is interesting to note an error
in the depiction of him: the
right arm holding the stick
has the fingers reversed. The pale blue sky with the billowing clouds is of an earlier painting but is
seamless with the later additions.

Little doubt arises in scholarly interpretation of this work. The men represents two sides of a
country, Spain, in a Civil War. The futility of their violence indicates that neither side is winning.
Goya typically showed war in this manner. The names of the players were of little importance. The
fact of mankind's brutality was, irrespective of the reasons for
the battle at hand.

Brugada entitled this work Two Men although it shows five

men. Shrouded in darkness three men huddle around a
document. Two more men are in the background, one gazing
upward despairingly. During the brief respite of democracy of
the Liberal Triennial, the press became increasingly important
though most of the populace was illiterate. It is assumed that
Goya was conveying a hunger for knowledge which he himself
possessed until his dying day.
 In Two Women Laughing at a Man two
prostitutes laugh at a man masturbating.
They are reminiscent of the two cackling
women in Two of a Kind, one of the
etchings in the Caprichos. The painting is
closely linked to Two Men Reading in
that the figures are in darkness engaged
in apparently trivial activities which may
or may not be fraught with significance.

Goya has often depicted insanity,

superstition, demons, witches, and
gatherings of devil worshipers. The
subject matter in the Black Paintings is
not new to Goya and certainly unheard
of in Spain. In fact, he created one such painting, The Incantation, for one of his society patrons
(Schickel 22). No doubt people believed in demons and witches at the time but the fact that Goya
portrayed them does not mean that he believed in them. More likely they were a metaphor for
what he and other men of the Enlightenment found despicable in their time. Witches and their ilk
exist in the form of stupidity, prejudice and folly (Schickel 22). The Black Paintings would serve as
the precursor to Expressionism, and Surrealism. Artists such as Manet and Picasso cited Goya as
an influence.

Goya's lengthy career is a story of an artist's desire to please and be successful at odds with his
desire to create what he sees fit. Goya was capable of producing "commercial" art - tapestry
illustrations, flattering portraits, religious frescos. But he could not completely suppress his unique
spirit which sometimes hampered his career as much as his ambitions sometimes hampered his
art. When he eventually achieved his goal of conventional success, he continued to grow as an
artist and move beyond those bounds. As dark and ominous as they are, the Black Paintings are
the happy resolution of a painter who reached the highest peak and no longer had to compromise
himself. That he continued to paint and even learn new skills - lithographs, painting on ivory - up
until his death suggests that the execution of the Black Paintings served as a personal catharsis.

The Black Paintings are the purest form of art as self-expression. They arose solely from the artist's
mind. Nobody commissioned them. Nobody paid him for them. He did not paint them for anybody
but himself. In conveying his inner demons they venture far beyond even his depictions of the
atrocities of war and his satires of base human behavior. But despite the fact that he did not
intend them to be viewed by other people, he created something that continues to be vital and
relevant almost two hundred years later. This feat is a testament to the power of art to transcend
the human condition.