Goya, an account of his life and works

by Albert Frederick Calvert

Goya’s portrait of the Duke of San Carlos, the most loyal friend of the son of Maria Luisa, has won the admiration of many painters and critics. The head is beautifully painted, the posing is natural and graceful, the figure lives and breathes. For this ‘miracle of art,’ as Viñaza styles it, Goya used only a few colours, which he spread over the canvas with an energetic and grandiose brush, each stroke being the expression of an æsthetic thought and the perfection of the technique of painting. The portrait, ‘which legitimises Goya’s descent from Velazquez,’ is said to be like the work of Rembrandt in its clare-obscure, of Watteau in its correctness, and of Titian in its delicacy and freshness. But there is no end to the expressions of admiration which Goya has inspired. Eduardo Rosales went to Zaragoza annually to visit Goya’s portrait of the Duke of San Carlos, and on one occasion, when he had been lifted by a friend that he might study the face of the portrait, he is reported to have exclaimed, ‘My friend, such painting will never be seen again.’

In 1798 Goya was intrusted with the decoration of the newly built church of San Antonio de la Florida, which had sprung into existence in 1720 as a primitive hermitage, had been destroyed when the El Pardo road was made in 1768, was re-erected two years later, and in 1792 was replaced by the present elegant edifice, which was built at the expense of the royal patrimony, after the plans of the celebrated architect, Ventura Rodriguez. The outside of the building is of good architectural style, the interior is small and elegant, and well suited to the rank and fashion which frequented it. The Church was opened for worship on July 1, 1799, and we read that ‘Madrid went wild with excitement at the glory of Goya’s achievement.’

Don Juan de Dios de la Rada y Delgado, who supplied the text for the volume of aquafortis engravings of these frescoes which D. José Moria Galvan y Candela executed in 1897, tells us that they were wholly in accord with the conditions of the time. But the sentiment of Mr. Rothenstein is nearer to the truth when, in speaking of these frescoes, he says that he can remember nothing which gave him so clear an idea of Goya’s cynicism. ‘Imagine,’ he writes, ‘a coquettish little church with a white and gold interior, more like a boudoir than a shrine, but furnished with altar, and seats, and confessionals. One’s nostrils expect an odour of frangipane rather than incense, and it must be admitted that Goya’s frescoes do not strike a discordant note in this indecorously holy place.’

The subject of the main composition covers the cupola, and contains upwards of a hundred figures considerably over life-size. The picture illustrates the miracle ascribed to St. Anthony of Padua, who restored to life the corpse of a murdered man in order that he might reveal the name of his assassin and rescue an innocent man who was about to be executed as the perpetrator of the crime. The scene is enclosed by a painted railing which surrounds the entire composition. We see the saint standing on an eminence against a luminous background. His life-giving words have just restored the corpse to consciousness. The man leans forward, supported in the arms of a companion, with his hands clasped in an attitude of profound veneration, his expressive face looking fixedly upon the saint with a gaze of surprise and gratitude. The central figures are surrounded by a motley crowd of men, women, and children, some of whom express their astonishment by eloquent gestures, while others appear indifferent to the miracle that is being performed, and one or two frolicsome boys are seen astride the figured railing. On the spandrils, the intrados, the curvilineal triangles of the arches, and behind the high altar, are groups of angels and cherubs. The angels are beautifully clothed and almost wanton in their human loveliness, the babes are entirely without the illusion of divine origin. It has been said that in this composition Goya perfectly interpreted the spirit of the Church de la Florida; certain it is that these angels with ‘the skin of a camellia, eyes of fire, and the beauty of a harlot,’ which move with audacious freedom of attitude, ‘not in pure spheres of blessedness, but in an atmosphere of atoms of gold illuminated by an Asiatic sun, are the strangest and most beautiful creatures that ever adorned a consecrated house.’

‘The frescoes of la Florida,’ comments C. Gasquoine Hartley, ‘are yet another witness of the truthful humour of Goya’s insight, but not one of his countrymen realised the irreverent irony of his work.’ ‘The figures are as full of piquant intention,’ declared Richard Muther, ‘as can be found in the most erotic paintings of Fragonard.... It is an artistic can-can; it is Casanova transferred to colour. All that the Church painting of the past had created is despised, forsaken; and this satire upon the Church and all its works was written in the land of Zurbarán, of Murillo.’ The Conde de la Viñaza alludes to Goya as an artist who painted pictures with religious subjects, but not religious pictures. ‘I do not know,’ he says, ‘a more profane master than this Velazquez, Rembrandt, Vicelli and Veronese rolled into one.’ And he instances his monumental painting at la Florida to illustrate his contention: ‘An admirable energy, the most splendid scale of tones. What relief! What a magic of colour! What a beautiful lesson the light of nature receives there! On the other hand, what lack of religious feeling and spirituality in those frescoes!’ And having denounced in the angels the silkiness of their skins, the brilliance of their eyes, and the wantonness of their beauty, he adds, ‘the miracles of the exemplary man of Padua are familiarly treated as a spectacle of wandering rope-dancers might be!’

It has been said that the King was incensed against the artist for introducing renowned ladies of his court in the faces of the winged archangels, and it is generally believed that the most aristocratic persons of the capital are represented in the frescoes, but if Charles IV. resented his choice of models, he had a most amiable way of expressing his displeasure. Goya himself, writing to Zapater, admitted that ‘the King and Queen are mad on your friend Goya,’ but the madness took the form of a royal order, dated October 31, 1799, which reads: ‘H.M. wishing to reward your distinguished merit and to give in person a testimony that may serve as a stimulus to all professors, of how much he appreciates your talent and knowledge of the noble art of painting, has been pleased to appoint you his chief painter of the Chamber, at a yearly salary of 50,000 reals, which you will receive from this date free of rights, and also 500 ducats a year for a carriage: and it is also his pleasure that you occupy the house now inhabited by Don Mariano Maëlla should he die first,’ etc.

Certainly the frescoes in his own day were extolled as the most important work ever done by Goya’s marvellous brush; he closed the eighteenth century with creations that won for him his greatest contemporary fame and raised him to the summit of his art. If nothing could be further removed from religious inspiration, nothing human could reveal more enchanting beauty, more exquisite grace. These frescoes were praised as ‘an inimitable symphony of light and colour.’ It is not in our province either to accept or to refute the claim that ‘they raise the most common things of Goya’s time to the high spheres of Spanish mystic realism.’ Goya’s contemporaries did not realise that the paintings outraged the canons of propriety and probability, and in later times Señor Rada finds that the painter, in this work, rises always to the regions of mystery, where only genius can penetrate, and responds to the peculiar influence of a temple which seems rather to inspire loving human aspirations, than mystic thoughts of infinite abstraction. ‘Apart from the fact that Goya was a believer and respectful to all that pertained to religion,’ urges Señor Rada, ‘in the principal subject of this painting (the “Cupola”) he is as manifestly mystic and delicate as any painter of the spiritual school. In the central group the risen man partakes of both realism and religious unction. The expression could not be better, nor could the attitude of the saint be more dignified. Apart from this in the other groups, he copied what he was wont to observe in popular gatherings, as he saw it, as it was, as it always will be.’

Goya’s Spanish apologists may well be justified in their contention that his originality forced him to disregard the classic rules and mannerism of traditional Spanish religious art. They see no impropriety or extravagance in surrounding the figure of a revered saint with a crowd of roysterers, prostitutes, cut-purses and Manzanares rascals. And, after all, the point is scarcely worth arguing. Again, when it is protested that Goya’s archangels and seraphim were rather beautiful women than angelic spirits—well! what better conception could there be of angels than the perfections of a charming woman? That is Señor Rada’s retort: ‘The naturalist Goya, surrounded by the seductive beauty of his time, could not conceive or even presume that the chosen beings who sing eternal praises in the ethereal regions of celestial glory were any different. More in accord doubtless, with our pious traditions and with Christian spiritual belief are the glories of Juan de Juanes and Murillo; but each artist has his peculiar temperament as well as his special gamut of colour, and to ask Goya to paint angels like those great Christian artists would be the same as asking the painters of a previous epoch to paint pictures of popular scenes like Goya’s.’

The logic of the foregoing is presumably sound, although the conclusion seems to us to support those who contend that Goya’s temperament rendered him an unsuitable person to translate religious episodes into colour. We remember, as Señors Rada and Pedro de Madrazo assert, that Goya was ‘a believer’ and ‘respectful in everything pertaining to religion,’ and we recall also that in their joint will the painter and his wife describe themselves as ‘firmly believing and confessing the mystery of the Holy Trinity ... and all other mysteries and sacraments, believed and confessed by our Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Mother Church, in whose true faith and belief we have lived.’ But we cannot, at the same time, forget that Goya’s detestation of the priesthood was violent and unresting. If he caught the spirit of ecstasy in his picture of San José de Calasanz receiving the Host at the hands of a priest, he also painted a representation of Santas Justa and Rufina. This picture has been described as the most profane and inappropriate work of the Aragonese genius. It is stated that he selected as his models a pair of well-known cocottes of Madrid, giving, it is said, the caustic, uncanonical explanation, ‘I will cause the faithful to worship vice!’ Goya may have called himself an orthodox conformer to the national church, but his contempt for his ecclesiastical patrons and those who practised the devotions which he mechanically professed, is avowed.

But apart from their religious significance, or their lack of it, these frescoes of the Church of San Antonio de la Florida reveal Goya at his best as a daring draughtsman and fine colourist. The energy, the spontaneity, the light and the relief, the magic of his paint—all are revealed in this work, which occupied him only three months. And what better proof could one desire of the truth of his own contention: ‘In nature colour exists no more than line—there is only light and shade.’ Goya knew how to produce abundant life with simply white lead, the black of smoke, green and vermillion. Richness of colour does not consist in an infinite variety of tints, but in the harmonious variety of tones and in the skilful selection of the key in which the picture is painted. Here Goya surpassed himself in the effect he produced with a palette that was severe in its simplicity, but the processes employed by the master to obtain his wonderfully vivid and charming tones were so varied that they cannot be exactly determined. Of the result, Paul Lafond writes, it is ‘as true as Velazquez, as energetic and as light as Rembrandt, as delicate as Titian, as spiritual as Tiepolo, with infinite perspectives like those of Tiepolo and Veronese, and as refined as Watteau.’