Powerpoint lecture presentation

1. Romanticism in Spain
Francisco de Goya

2. Vicento López y Portaña,
Portrait of Francisco de
Goya, 1826
The Spanish painter Francisco de Goya was a leading representative of
Romanticism

3. Francisco de Goya, Charles IV and His Family, 1800
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
He began his career as a court painter to Charles IV of Spain, an enlightened
monarch

4. Francisco de Goya, Charles IV and His Family, 1800
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
This portrait of the royal family captures all the glitter and finery of a monarchy that
was soon to be toppled by Napoleon’s invading troops

5. Francisco de Goya, Charles IV and His Family, 1800
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
The artist can be seen in the background, at work on a large canvas – recalling
Velazquez’s painting of Las Meninas

6. Francisco de Goya, Charles IV and His Family, 1800
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
The royal family is depicted with a remarkable lack of flattery, their unglamorous
appearance seems at odds with the glittery spectacle of their costumes

7. Francisco de Goya, Charles IV and His Family, 1800
Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
In the wake of the French Revolution the very concept of monarchy was in
question, and Goya – a supporter of Enlightenment ideas – seems to capture this
uncertainty in the figures’ furtive expressions

8. Carle Vernet, Napoleon at the Gates of Madrid in 1808, 1810
In 1808 French troops invaded Spain and Napoleon’s brother was made King of
Spain
Jean Baptiste Joseph Wicar, Portrait of Joseph
Bonaparte, King of Spain, 1808

9. Francisco de Goya, Lo mismo, etching from Los Disastros de la Guerra, 1810-15
Image source: NYPL Digital Library
The Spanish populace rose up against the French occupying armies

10. Francisco de Goya, Frontispiece, Los Disastros de la Guerra, 1810-15
http://www.gasl.org/refbib/Goya__Guerra.pdf
Goya chronicled the atrocities he witnessed in a series of etchings called “The
Disasters of War”

11. Francisco de Goya, Y no hai remedio (“And there is no help for it,”) etching from Los Disastros de la Guerra, 1810-15
Image source: NYPL Digital Library
“In eighty small, compact images, each etched with acid on copper, Goya
told the appalling truth. He aimed a high-power beam on hideous sights:
guerrillas shot at close range; the ragged remains of mutilated corpses; and
the emaciated victims of war’s partner, famine. Never before had a story of
man’s inhumanity to man been so compellingly told, every episode reported
with the utmost compassion, the human form described with such keen
honesty and pitying respect.”
Voorhies, James. “Francisco de Goya (1746–1828) and the Spanish
Enlightenment”. In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

12. Francisco de Goya, Y no hai remedio (“And there is no help for it,”) etching from Los Disastros de la Guerra, 1810-15
Image source: NYPL Digital Library
In this scene, we see a man about to be executed by a firing squad just
outside the edge of the picture
All that can be detected of their presence is the menacing muzzle of their
rifles

13. Francisco de Goya, Y no hai remedio (“And there is no help for it,”) etching from Los Disastros de la Guerra, 1810-15
Image source: NYPL Digital Library
In the foreground lies the corpse of a man who has already been
shot, while in the background more prisoners are meeting a similar
fate

14. Francisco de Goya, Y no hai remedio (“And there is no help for it,”) etching from Los Disastros de la Guerra, 1810-15
Image source: NYPL Digital Library
The utter hopelessness of war is expressed by the caption which
reads: “Y no hai remedio” (“There is no help for it”)

15. Francisco de Goya, No quieren (They do not want to), plate 39 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
There are images of women being brutally raped and murdered

16. Francisco de Goya, Ya no hay tiempo (There is no time), plate 19 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum

17. Francisco de Goya, Lo Mismo (The same), plate 3 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
And of Spanish rebels fighting back with the same degree of brutality

18. Francisco de Goya, Esto es peor (This is worse), plate 37 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
The atrocities that Goya chronicles makes us recoil in horror; in this scene,
a man has been dismembered and impaled on a tree, while in the
background soldiers are murdering more men, and dragging their corpses

19. Francisco de Goya, Esto es peor (This is worse), plate 37 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
In Goya’s eyes, war does not inspire heroism and nobility; instead, it
reduces us to our most animal nature

20. Francisco de Goya, Grande hazaña, con muertos (Heroic Feat! With Dead Men!), plate 39 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Art Institute of Chicago
In this image, we see men who have been dismembered and impaled on a
tree; the caption reads “Grande hazaña, con muertos” (Heroic feat! With
Dead Men!)

21. Francisco de Goya, Grande hazaña, con muertos (Heroic Feat! With Dead Men!), plate 39 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Art Institute of Chicago
Its as if Goya is asking: “what compels human beings to commit such
brutal acts on men who are already dead?”

22. Francisco de Goya, Tampoco (), plate 36 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
This image is particularly chilling, as it shows a soldier gazing indifferently
at a man who has been hanged, his trousers pulled down around his ankles

23. Francisco de Goya, Tampoco (), plate 36 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
The soldier’s lack human compassion recalls the impassive pose of the
Assyrian king in Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus

24. Francisco de Goya, Tampoco (), plate 36 from The Disasters of War, c. 1812/15, published 1863
Prado Museum
But it also bears a chilling resemblance to the photographs of American
soldiers who tortured prisoners at Abu Graib with similar indifference

25. Goya also completed a major painting chronicling the war, titled The Third
of May 1808

26. Francisco de Goya, Third of May 1808, 1808
Prado Museum
It depicts a French firing squad executing unarmed Spanish peasants in
retaliation for an uprising against the occupying army

27. Francisco de Goya, Third of May 1808, 1808
Prado Museum
The scene takes place at night and is illuminated by a lantern

28. Francisco de Goya, Third of May 1808, 1808
Prado Museum
Our eyes are drawn to the spotlighted figure whose arms are raised in the
pose of the crucified Christ as he is about to be executed

29. The bodies of the men who have already been
shot lie in a bloody heap on the ground

30. Goya makes us sympathize with the peasants by focusing on their anguish
as they await their fate

31. The firing squad, on the other hand, is faceless as they carry out their brutal
task

32. The grouping of the figures is an ironic reference to David’s Oath of the
Horatii, as if to suggest that the heroic patriotism of the Revolution had
been transformed into a heartless killing machine

33. Goya’s painting was painted on the grand scale of “history painting,” but it is
radically different from modern history paintings such as Benjamin West’s
Death of General Wolfe, or David’s Death of Marat

34. Francisco de Goya, Third of May 1808, 1808
Prado Museum
The painting is different because it does not celebrate virtue, nor does it
glorify a modern “hero”

35. Francisco de Goya, Third of May 1808, 1808
Prado Museum
Instead, Goya focuses on the helpless victims of social injustice

36. Francisco de Goya, Third of May 1808, 1808
Prado Museum
In contrast to the Neoclassical celebration of noble virtue, Goya presents us
with a modern anti-hero – the Romantic victim of human brutality, and of
man’s inhumanity to man

37. During the later period of his life, Goya worked on a series of so-called
“Black Paintings” that decorated the walls of his Madrid house

38. Francisco de Goya, Dos viejos comiends sopa, 1819-1820
They are amongst the most horrifying images in the history of art

39. Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring
his Children, 1819-23
This painting depicts the Greek myth of Saturn, one of the Titans who,
fearing he would be overthrown by his children, ate each one upon their
birth

40. Francisco de Goya, Saturn Devouring
his Children, 1819-23
In their dark and brooding exploration of the bestial side of human nature,
Goya’s Black paintings reflect a profound loss of faith in the Enlightenment
belief in human Reason, Heroism, and Nobility

41. In Goya’s eye, man is nothing more than an animal

42. Gericault’s Raft of the Medusa is another example of artistic social
commentary

43. Theodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819
16’ x 23’ Louvre

44. To prepare for the painting
Gericault read everything he could
in the press, and interviewed
survivors

45. He visited the local morgue to study
cadavers and brought body parts
home to study them as they
decayed

46. Theodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819
16’ x 23’ Louvre

47. Theodore Géricault, Raft of the Medusa, 1818-1819
16’ x 23’ Louvre
As one critic complained: "Monsieur Géricault seems mistaken. The goal of
painting is to speak to the soul and the eyes, not to repel."

48. Joel-Peter Witkin, Raft of George W. Bush, 2006
Photograph
Image source: http://www.edelmangallery.com/witkin33.htm

50. The Enlightenment invented the
radical idea of freedom and equality
for all

51. Neoclassicism’s faith in Reason
and Science was not prepared to
account for the inherent irrationality
of human behavior
George Cruikshank, The Radicals Arms, 1819
Image source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror

52. It took Romanticism to discover the
complexity of the human psyche
Francisco de Goya
The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters
From Los Caprichos
c. 1798