of Goya’s career. French writers declare that the painter remained in
Italy from 1769 to 1774. There is a full-length likeness of Pope
Benedict XIV. still in the Vatican which is said to have been painted by
Goya in a few hours, but as that pontiff died in 1756 there is much
reason to doubt the truth of the legend.
The Conde de la Viñaza in his _Life_ of Goya refutes every detail of
this story. It is said that while Goya was in Italy he secured a prize
offered by the Parma Academy of Fine Arts for a picture of ‘Hannibal
surveying Rome from a pinnacle of the Alps,’ but the Conde maintains
that Goya at this time was in Spain and that it was in his own country
he painted his picture and carried off the second prize. In the _Mercure
de France_ of January 1772 we read: ‘Le 27 Juin dernier l’Académie
Royale des Beaux Arts de Parme tint sa séance publique pour la
distribution de ses prix. Le sujet de peinture était: “Annibal vainqueur
du haut des Alpes jette ses premiers regards sur les campagnes
d’Italie.”... Le premier prix de peinture a été accordé au tableau qui
avait devise: “Montes fregit aceto,” et qui était de monsieur Paul
Borroni etc. Le second prix de peinture a été remporté par M. François
Goya romain (_sic_), élève de M. Vajeu, peintre du roi d’Espagne.’
The following paragraph by M. Paul Mantz from the same source is quoted
into the _Archives de l’art français_: ‘L’Académie a remarqué avec
plaisir dans le second tableau un beau maniement de pinceau, de la
chaleur d’expression dans le regard d’Annibal et un caractère de
grandeur dans l’attitude de ce général. Si M. Goya se fût moins écarté
dans sa composition du sujet du programme, et s’il eût mis plus de
vérité dans son coloris, il aurait balancé les suffrages pour le premier
prix.’
The Conde de la Viñaza, Goya’s Spanish biographer, maintains that this
picture was painted and the prize won before the artist went to Italy,
and he proves, by the publication of documents preserved in the Archives
of the Pilar Cathedral at Zaragoza, that in October 1771 the painter,
forsaking Madrid, was back on the banks of the Ebro in the enjoyment of
an enviable reputation. This is in direct contradiction to the old
stories describing a love adventure as the reason for his sudden and
hasty departure from Rome. A mad enterprise which had for its object the
rescue of a young maid from a convent ended, it is said, in his capture,
and he ‘only escaped the gallows by the most reckless and headlong
flight.’ This much we know, that Goya was in Zaragoza in 1771. He
returned not as a fugitive and an outlaw, but as a reputable citizen
having the confidence of the Cathedral authorities, who commissioned him
to paint the quadrangular vault in the Holy Chapel. The fresco which he
prepared as a proof that ‘he was experienced in this kind of painting,’
was submitted to the Building Committee of the Cathedral, on November
11, 1771, together with the director’s assurance that it had received
the approval of experts, and with Goya’s offer to paint the vault of the
small choir for 15,000 reals, he providing the labourers and materials.
The Committee, having heard this proposition and recognising it as
better than that made by Don Antonio Velazquez, who asked 25,000 reals
for the work, ‘agreed to Goya’s proposition, but in order to be safe and
sure,’ it was stipulated that he should make some further studies and
submit them to Madrid for the approval of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts
(San Fernando), ‘which obtained, the negotiations would be completed and
the contract signed.’
On January 27, 1772, Goya presented his study to the Committee, who
having ‘already been informed that it was a skilful piece of work in
specially good style,’ approved it, and waiving the stipulation that it
should be submitted to the Royal Academy, they decided that the artist
should forthwith proceed with the work. The documents give no
information concerning the progress of the work, but we learn from a
minute in the Building Committee’s meeting, held on June 1, 1772, that
the painting of the choir was nearly finished by that date, and the
scaffolding was about to be taken down.
We are without any authentic particulars concerning the next three years
of Goya’s life, but the Conde de la Viñaza supposes that with the 15,000
reals which this work brought him, he went to Italy. How he passed his
time there cannot be definitely stated, but many interesting surmises
have obtained currency. We are assured by Mr. Muther that for Goya ‘the
antique had no more existence than the magnificent art of the
_cinque-cento_: what attracted him was rather the teeming life of the
people. Out of the red robes of the priests, the costumes, gay with
colour, of the women of Trastevere, the merry, careless freedom of the
Lazzaroni, he created fragments of life, rich with all its varied
colour. Muleteers with their jangling cars, religious processions and
Carnivale masques,’ to say nothing of much ‘love-making, scuffling and
stabbing’--these are imagined to be the influences that directed his
genius during his stay in Italy. Paul Lafond (_Goya_), while admitting
the legendary element in most of the reported incidents in the life of
the painter, repeats the stories of his ascending to the lantern in the
dome of St. Peter’s, of his making a tour of Cecilia Melella’s tomb,
walking upright on the narrow ledge of the cornice, of his amatory
escapade at a convent and its resultant flight from Rome. He also adds
that his _genre_ pictures attracted so much attention in Rome that the
Russian ambassador, instructed by his sovereign to invite a number of
distinguished artists to establish themselves at the Court at St.
Petersburg, made Goya a very tempting offer, which he refused. On the
other hand, the Conde de la Viñaza declares that ‘he was frequently seen
studying the most sublime frescoes in the land, leaning boldly on the
decorations of the architraves or on the most dangerous parts of the
cornices’; that he secured the necessaries of life by the sale of
pictures of the customs of his native land; that he made the
acquaintance of Luis David, for whom he formed a deep and lasting
attachment; and, finally, that ‘the only recollection he preserved of
Italy in his old age was of his having met there the painter of “The
Rape of the Sabines.”’
The friendship that existed between Goya and David has called attention
to the similarities in the temperament and the aims of the two men,
whose work was so widely different. Both used their brushes to glorify
the throne and received honours from kings; both sacrificed tradition on
the altar of new ideas; and both lacked the tenderness and the faith
necessary in the treatment of religious subjects. David was the friend
of Robespierre and Saint Just, of Marat and Buonaparte; he painted the
‘Coronation of the Hero of the Pyramids’; he attended the Convention and
voted for the death of Louis XVI. Goya was the friend of Godoy and of
the ministers of Joseph Buonaparte; he painted the pictures of the
Usurper as well as those of the kings that preceded and followed him;
and he executed ‘The Disasters of War’ and ‘The Caprices.’ David was
ambitious for the aggrandisement of his art, and Goya strove to make it
worthy of its civilising mission, but they differed in the means by
which they sought to attain their respective ends. David was inspired by
the antique, and produced works which possessed the hardness of statuary
as well as its clear-cut accuracy of form, while Goya went direct to
nature for his inspiration, and his paintings are the reflections of
naked reality. The painter of ‘The Death of Socrates’ was imbued with
the guiding purpose of making his work dignified, elaborately accurate,
and exclusive, while the author of the frescoes of La Florida, drawing
inspiration from the customs of the toilers and the dandies alike, held
that ‘a picture is finished when its effect is true.’ David represented
man endowed with improbable and unattractive virtues, Goya painted man
as he was; David idealised the individual form with classic grandeur,
and his austere and solemn compositions, though based on observation of
nature, were moulded to a fixed external idea; but Goya was as faithful
to psychologic truth as to anatomy, and his brush revealed the moral
sentiments of mankind and laid bare the passionate and terrible emotions
of the human soul.
When Goya returned to Madrid in 1775 Spanish art was directed by Mengs
and Tiepolo, by Maëlla and Francesco Bayeu. Mengs, the ‘reasoning
artificer,’ who had neglected the world of nature in his servile study
of Raphael and the antique, was a painter who theorised much and
invented little. According to Richard Cumberland he was an artist
incapable of portraying either life or death; a painter whose creations
neither terrify nor inspire passion or transport; a timid, conscientious
craftsman with an excellent hand for miniature. Yet Mengs, the ‘Spanish
David,’ as we are told by José de Madrazo, was regarded by the youth of
his time as ‘the regenerator of the antique,’ and from the dictatorial
chair of pictorial art, his voice ‘was heard like that of an oracle, not
so much by the artistic cohorts of agitated Germany, where he received
little attention, as by the peaceful Italo-Spanish pleiades, who
applauded with enthusiasm the exhumation of the Hellenic form from among
the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, because it was the fashion, and
without comprehending the reach of that fortuitous event.’
In the fantastic, beautiful, but slightly handled compositions of
Battista Tiepolo we have the reaction against this form of classicism.
The Venetian possessed a fertile and brilliant fancy, his execution was
free and daring, if at times careless, and, in addition, he had a wide
knowledge of the resources of his art. His decorations in the new palace
at Madrid were ‘extolled to the skies of a generation that had forgotten
Velazquez.’ Tiepolo got his effects rapidly; Mengs was laborious to a
fault, but his work was probably a better guide for second-rate
painters, themselves poorly equipped in knowledge, than the clearly
(though incorrectly) drawn compositions of his Venetian contemporary.
As director of the Académia de San Fernando, Mengs suggested several new
laws for the government of the students and certain alterations in the
methods of study. These were at first adopted, but in carrying them into
effect the director seems to have met with opposition and involved
himself in quarrels, which ‘did little credit to the wisdom of his
fellow-directors, or to his own temper and tact.’ As a result of these
dissensions Mengs failed to accomplish all his reforms, but he secured
several important changes in the Academy. It was due to his efforts that
plaster casts were taken of the statues discovered at Herculaneum.
Charles III. dowered the institution with a rich collection of marbles
and bronzes which had been presented to his Majesty by Mengs, and he
supplemented this gift with a large number of statues and busts from the
Museum of Cristina of Sweden, and with pictures from the royal galleries
and from the suppressed houses of the Jesuits. The sovereign also formed
a library for the Academy, opened a school of perspective (Royal Decree
of August 19, 1766), and commissioned the surgeon Augustin Navarro to
instruct the students in the science of nature and the human form.
In his efforts on behalf of the Academy, Mengs had the loyal assistance
of Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Maëlla. The latter’s pictures are
deficient in invention, in vigour of execution, and in variety; indeed
his cold pearl-coloured creations have nothing to compensate their
feeble and unimpressive handling and colour. Bayeu was gifted with
peculiar intelligence and as an artist displayed fertility, capacity in
composing a picture, and a skilful touch, but his designs lack vigour
and delicacy, and his colour is disagreeable.
When Goya reappeared in Madrid in 1775, Mengs was dictator of art, and
Bayeu was the Court painter. Goya’s art owed nothing to contemporary
influence or example, but to these two officials he was indebted for
employment and for his wife. The young Aragonese knew nothing of the
bitterness of long apprenticeship; his rise in the esteem of the art
world of Madrid was rapid. This, in a measure, was due to his genius,
but his worldly prospects were assisted by his marriage to Josefa Bayeu,
the sister of the Court painter, and by the influence of Mengs, which
secured for him a commission to execute a series of designs for the
tapestries woven at the Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara. This first
series were designed for the decoration of the dining-room and
bed-chamber of the Prince of the Asturias in the Palace of El Pardo.
Goya delivered the first picture on October 31, 1776; on January 26,
1778, the tenth and last cartoon was delivered.
Between 1776 and 1791 Goya executed the forty-six tapestry cartoons
which now hang in the Prado, and he repainted many of his designs on a
smaller scale for the Countess of Benavente at the Alameda. As late as
1802 the Santa Bárbara factory wove tapestries from Goya’s pictures, and
up to 1832 some of the more favoured designs had been reproduced four
times. Isabella II. presented some of these fabrics to King Leopold of
Belgium, but the greater number adorn the royal palaces of Madrid, El
Pardo, and the Escorial.
The designs for tapestries which Goya composed during this period of
over twenty-five years form a large part of the painter’s artistic
output. It has been said that these early designs do not exhibit any of
the painter’s predominant characteristics, and that they reveal
crudeness and uncertainty. It is probable that Goya approached the task,
in the first place, with very little knowledge of either the industry or
the style of design required from him. Mr. Rothenstein remarks that the
models in the Prado are painted ‘in so crude a key, and with so little
regard for harmony of colouring, that their merit is apt to escape the
attention of many students,’ while the strong reds and yellows Goya
employs in them have prompted Mr. Muther to compare them unfavourably
with the ‘tender delicate colouring’ of Watteau and Lancret. Certainly
Goya’s designs are unequal in merit. It must be remembered, too, that
often he had not the good fortune of being reproduced faithfully; while
other artists employed by the factory gained much by reproduction, his
work almost invariably suffered in the process. The officials at the
factory objected to the elaborate and delicate work which Goya
submitted, and a beautiful model (‘The Blind Man playing the Guitar’)
was returned to him on the ground that it could not be successfully
transferred to the threads of the warp. Goya corrected his design by
exaggerating all the tints and he accentuated the figures by enclosing
them in white outlines. This fact suggests one reason why Goya’s
enthusiasm in the employment speedily grew cool.
We learn from the Palace archives that the officials, who were more
concerned with the commercial than the artistic side of the
manufacture, declared that Goya’s figures were ‘dandies and girls with
so much decoration of coifs, ribbons, fal-lals, gauzes, etc., that much
time and patience is wasted on them, and the work is unproductive.’ They
contrived to remedy this defect by covering his figures with paintings
of trees or clouds or anything else that made the tapestry easier and
cheaper to produce, and this treatment was not calculated to make Goya
more careful in the finish of his designs. It therefore follows of
necessity that only occasionally among his later cartoons can one be
found to compare with those in the first series, such, for instance, as
‘The Picnic on the Banks of the Manzanares’ and ‘The Dance at San
Antonio de la Florida,’ or indeed with any of the earlier designs, which
were all remarkable for the vigour and animation of the scenes, the
delicacy of colouring (despite an occasional surfeit of sienna and red
ochre), the strength and freedom of the drawing, and the genius for
natural and effective grouping in the composition of the pictures. Goya
would appear in these works to be carried away by his imagination, and
he has presented to us a masterly panorama of all that is brightest and
most joyous in the national customs--a panorama that pulsates with
life, bubbles over with spontaneous merriment, and fascinates with its
irresistible gaiety. We seem to hear the bells of the pony chaise and
the pleasant jokes of the wenches at the fêtes on the banks of the
Manzanares; the farces of Ramón de la Cruz are translated into the
language of colour. And the pictures with children--happy, roguish
youngsters--reveal not only marvellous skill, but a sympathy with the
poetry and charm of childhood that has not been surpassed. Zapater tells
us that Goya was often seen surrounded by children in his house by the
Manzanares, and his whole-hearted love of childish grace and innocence
is manifested in these studies.
Among his later work as a designer of tapestry one of the best examples
is ‘The Earthenware Stall,’ which in its delicacy of colouring, its
skilful arrangement of transparent draperies, and its brilliant
lighting, is comparable with ‘The Village Wedding,’ which Cruzada
declares to be the most graceful composition of the whole collection.
Here the story is told with supreme humour. The stupid and happy youth
in his finest attire walks beside his fresh-coloured bride who is
bedecked with finery and ribbons, a priest and the parents and friends
of the young couple accompany them, and the village piper marches in
front surrounded by a crowd of singing, shouting, dancing children. In
beauty of colouring this design is the equal of the handsome, graceful
figures in ‘The Water-Girls,’ and in its mirthfulness and realism it is
a companion to his illustration of ‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ which overflows
with irrepressible merriment. Another notable design which is also the
largest that Goya painted, is ‘El Agosto,’ a striking piece of work. ‘On
contemplating this picture,’ writes the Conde de la Viñaza--who declares
that it entitles Goya to be known as the Theocritus, the Virgil, and the
Garcilaso of painting--‘the sun seems to burn and asphyxiate with its
fire, the reapers appear to be dazed with wine, and we seem to hear the
chirping of a cricket hidden in the sheaves. Of the children crying and
playing on the hills of straw, some appear to be the children of Van
Dyck, and others the work of the expressive hand that created the
weeping Ganymede.’
The forty-six cartoons mentioned in the Prado catalogue--of which
thirty-three are reproduced at the end of this volume--are now contained
in the Goya Room of the Madrid Gallery. During the reign of Isabella
II., Frederico de Madrazo, the director of the Royal Gallery,
repeatedly importuned the administrators of the Royal Patrimony to
exhume the Goya designs from the cellars of the Tapestry offices to
which they had been consigned, and to have them restored and housed in
the Royal Museum. This request, however, was not conceded, and it
remained for Gregorio Cruzada Villaamil to rescue them from the oblivion
into which they had fallen. He succeeded in having the cartoons placed
at the disposal of the Escorial Tapestry Museum Commission, and after
being restored they were sent to the Prado. Unfortunately the works are
difficult to restore and quickly deteriorate; for it was Goya’s practice
to sketch his pictures with extraordinary rapidity, to surround the
whole with carbon, and then trace his figures with the aid of _aqua
rás_. Many of the studies in the Prado are covered with glass in order
to preserve from total loss the canvases on which scarcely any oil has
been used beyond that contained in the colours.
During these first years of his material prosperity Goya varied his work
for the tapestry factory by producing _genre_ paintings and a few
portraits. He also began at this time to exercise his extraordinary
powers as an engraver. As an exponent of _genre_ he was unsurpassed, as
a portraitist he was excelled by Velazquez alone, but his genius is more
certainly demonstrated in his _aquafortis_ work than in either his
_genre_ studies, his frescoes, or his portraits. ‘Goya was pre-eminently
fitted, both by his environment and by his nature,’ writes C. Gasquoine
Hartley, ‘to be the exponent of _genre_.’ The truth of this dictum is
patent to all who study his canvases of this period. The customs that he
depicted were the customs that he loved; the subjects, the people, and
the passions represented are always real. He reveals both imagination
and invention in the grouping and arrangement of the scenes. The vigour
and boldness of his manner is revealed in the success with which he
seizes, as with a camera, the fleeting movement--the unfinished smile,
the arrested gesture--and seals it upon his canvas. His scenes of
carnival and of merry-makings, his representations of bull-fights, and
his sidelights on the Inquisition, are living phases of the life which
surrounded him and in which he found his pleasure and his inspiration.
The spirit of Goya is in all these pictures. His dramatic temperament,
his fierce humour, and his imagination found their outlet in the life of
the period and expressed itself in these paintings in which that life is
immortalised.
In all that he painted Goya never lost sight of, if he did not always
attain, his object of securing absolute truth of effect. Whether he is
employed on a portrait, a representation of romance or _diablerie_, or a
religious fresco, he is true to the principle explained in his own
remark that ‘a picture is finished when its effect is true.’ And the
truth of ‘his flashes of insight imprisoned in line and paint,’ give his
work a sense of modernity which is seen in the pictures of few other
artists. M. Paul Lefond declares: ‘More than any other painter of past
periods he is made to be understood in our day. Something more and
something better than a modern, the Aragon painter still remains a
forerunner; he is still almost a contemporary of the generation to come.
His manner of translating and interpreting nature is absolutely modern.
He renders it as he sees it, with the comprehension of an artist of our
time, daring and independent. He is more than a hundred years in advance
of his century. His manner of portrait-painting is completely outside
all theory of teaching; his fashion of treating frescoes is an
extraordinary audacity. He has in his whole existence, without truce or
compromise, been pursued by this idea of arriving at the true expression
of life.’