By the time that Goya reached his maturity the range of his palette was reduced to very restricted limits: blue, white, black, vermilion, some of the ochres and burnt sienna. And his tools were correspondingly meagre. Brushes of the rudest make served his purpose; or he would use a sponge or stick, securing some of his subtlest effects with the ball of his thumb. From several unfinished bust-portraits in the Prado it appears that he worked over an under-surface of orange-red; which no doubt accounts for the warmth and fulness of his greys. On the other hand, the subtlety which he succeeded in giving to all his local colors, laid on as they were in simple flat tones, is the result of a profoundly sensitive feeling for values. Goya’s rendering of the varying qualities of light, as they affect the hue of a surface, is different from Velasquez’s. With the latter, if one may state it briefly, it is rather the product of observation; with Goya, of feeling. Therefore, it is largely influenced by temperament, which makes it akin to the modern handling of values. In this, as in the character of his impression, Goya is a modern of the moderns.

It is interesting to compare Goya’s equestrian portraits with those of Velasquez. Goya’s best, in the Prado, are those of the King and Queen. Perhaps the most noticeable difference appears in the treatment of the horses. Velasquez, as we have seen, gave to each of his animals an individual character and action, suitable also to the character and psychology of the rider. A spirited small creature bears the little Don Carlos; a showy, powerful brute the swaggering Olivares; a beast, trained in stately menage, the proud and reserved king. With Goya, however, there is little apparent study of the structure or character of the animal; it is felt for its value as a handsome mass. And the rider’s figure seems to have been felt in the same way; as if by emphasising its mass the artist could evade the inevitable commonplace of the face. Accordingly, in the case of the Queen, the impression we receive is of a black beaver hat with scarlet cockade, scarlet revers and silver braid on a black habit; black trousers against the deep green and gold of the pummel and saddle-cloth, and of a red-bay horse with darker tail; the whole forming a striking silhouette against a dull drab sky that deepens to slaty grey on the right, and a tawny, pale green landscape fading toward the horizon to silver buffs and olive. Similarly, the King’s portrait suggests the effect of a handsome silhouette, which culminates in a blaze of splendor amid the decorations that cover the rider’s breast. This is artfully balanced by the brilliantly white chest of the horse and by a paler white light in one part of the sky. Both these portraits, in fact, are primarily color-impressions. It is as if Goya had taken refuge in this point of view, in order to get over the difficulty of adjusting two such undignified personages to the monumental feeling of a large equestrian portrait. It was a case in which he tried to keep in control his feelings as a satirist.

..........

QUEEN MARIA LUISA ON HORSEBACKGOYA
THE PRADO

For Goya’s role at Court was that of an audacious satirist, censor and chastiser of the follies and iniquities of his day. He was allowed a free hand, for his gallantry endeared him to the ladies and his prowess as a fighter made him feared by the men, while all, except the immediate victim, could enjoy the adroitness and daring of his humor. His particular bête noir was Godoy, whom he mercilessly satirised. He would amuse the idle moments of the Court by sprinkling the contents of a sandbox on the writing table, and drawing with his finger caricatures of the minister. On one occasion he appeared at some function during a period of Court mourning and was refused admission by the ushers, because he was wearing white stockings. He retired to an ante-room and with pen and ink relieved their whiteness with funereal caricatures of Godoy. Among the amours in which he indulged was one with the young Duchess of Alba, who returned his passion. Their liaison aroused the jealousy of the Queen, who banished the Duchess to her country home. When Goya learned of it he pursued his inamorata in hot haste and caught her up on the road, for an axle of her carriage had broken. There being no smithy near, he himself lit a fire and repaired the damage. The exertion was succeeded by a chill, which induced the first symptoms of the deafness that in later life became complete. Meanwhile, the Court could not do without its Goya, and as he would not return without his Duchess, she too was recalled.

But Goya was far from being a mere buffoon and galliard. Although his passionate nature with its streak of coarseness made him at home in the petty intrigues of the court, he was a part of the wide-spread revolutionary spirit of his day. While Europe, and particularly France, was seething with the yeast of unrest, this solitary figure, far off in Spain, was already in revolt. In his denunciation of the hypocrisy and vice of his age, as exhibited alike in the Church, Society and the middle and lower classes, he was a Voltaire and Robespierre in one, brandishing the torch that subsequently kindled the French revolution. In this, as in his technique, he was ahead of his age. Meanwhile, the mental attitude which inspired him was characteristically Spanish: by turns grim and gay, humorous and deadly serious, coarse, sensual and cruel. In two series of etchings, Caprichos (Whims) and Proverbios (Proverbs), the scourge of his satire bit into the plates with a virulence of scorn and nakedness of exposure that have never been surpassed and, before his day, had never been attempted by an artist. In one of his etchings, a dead man has returned to life and is writing with his finger on the wall nada—nothing. Goya was a nihilist, bitter therefore against quacks and empirics, whether priests, doctors or lawyers. Also he laid bare the emptiness and horror of passion, a hashish that beguiles forgetfulness and leads to impotence and nothingness.

This idea of the nothingness of life in general, and of passion in particular is expressed with Goya’s characteristic ferocity and lust of the horrible in The Fates (p. 182). Midway between earth and sky three female figures are floating, their lower limbs entwined so as to form a cradle, on which, with hands bound behind his