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NATALIE PORTMAN PUTS HERSELF THROUGH TORTURE

FRANCISCO GOYA (1746–1828)

Francisco José de Goya Y Lucientes, known as Goya, was one of the earliest artists to see beneath the façade of rationality and expose the mind as the seat of irrationality. Active in Spain and employed for much of his career by the corrupt court of the Spanish king Charles IV, Goya rejected the light-hearted fantasies of his great predecessor at court Giovanni Battista Tiepolo. Instead, Goya looked penetratingly at the characters of the decaying monarchy who employed him, experienced the brutality of Napoleon's forces on the Spanish people, and distilled from these and other events a view of humanity as often bestial.

Francisco Goya, considered to be "the Father of Modern Art," began his painting career just after the late Baroque period. Over the course of his long career, Goya moved from jolly and lighthearted to deeply pessimistic and searching in his paintings, drawings, etchings, and frescoes.

Goya was one of the first artists to make human madness a major theme in his work. Many of Goya's paintings, such as "Saturn Devouring His Children" (shown here) and etchings depict madness, and even his portraits often emphasized the neurotic and decadent nature of his subjects.

Goya was born in Fuendetodos, Spain, in the kingdom of Aragón in 1746 to José Benito de Goya y Franque and Gracia de Lucientes y Salvador. He spent his childhood in Fuendetodos, where his family lived in a house bearing the family crest of his mother. His father earned his living as a gilder. About 1749, the family bought a house in the city of Zaragoza and some years later moved into it. Goya attended school at Escuelas Pias, where he formed a close friendship with Martin Zapater, and their correspondence over the years became valuable material for biographies of Goya. At age 14, he entered apprenticeship with the painter José Luzán.

GOYA’S FAMOUS BLACK PAINTINGS

Perhaps the best known of the Black Paintings is Saturn Devouring His Son. The image portrays the Roman god Saturn eating one of his children. Fearing a prophecy that one of his children would overthrow him, Saturn ate each of his children upon their birth. Goya depicts this act of cannibalism with startling savagery. The background is black, while the limbs and head of Saturn seem to pop out of the shadows. Saturn's eyes are huge and bulging as if he is mad. His fingers dig into the back of his child, whose head and right arm are already consumed. Saturn is about to take another bite of the body's left arm. The only use of color besides flesh-tones is the splash of red blood covering the mutilated outline of the upper part of the partially eaten, motionless body, which is chillingly depicted in deathly white. He had a first-hand and acute awareness of panic, terror, fear and hysteria. He had survived two near-fatal illnesses, and grew increasingly anxious and impatient in fear of relapse. The combination of these factors is thought to have led to his production of 14 works known collectively as the Black Paintings.

Using oil paints and working directly on the walls of his dining and sitting rooms, Goya created intense, haunting works with dark themes. The paintings were not commissioned and were not meant to leave his home; it is likely that the artist never intended the works for public exhibition: "...these paintings are as close to being hermetically private as any that have ever been produced in the history of Western art."^[ Goya did not title the paintings, or if he did, he never revealed those titles; most of their names have been provided by art historians.