The Caprichos are the only productions of Goya in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris. He has, however, produced other works,—namely, the "Tauromaquia," a collection of thirty-three plates; "Scenes of the Invasion," which make twenty plates, and ought to make more than forty; the etchings after Velasquez and many others.
The "Tauromaquia" is a collection of scenes representing various episodes of the bull-fights, from the time of the Moors down to the present day. Goya was a finished aficionado, passing a considerable portion of his time with the torreros, so that he was the most competent person in the world to treat the matter thoroughly. Although the attitudes, positions, the defence and the attack, or, to speak technically, the various suertes and cogidas are remarkable for their irreproachable exactitude; Goya has invested the different scenes with his mysterious shadows and fantastic colouring. What strange and ferocious heads! What savage and odd dresses! What fury in the action! His Moors, treated somewhat in the manner of the Turks in the time of the Empire, as far as costume is concerned, have the most characteristic physiognomies imaginable—a stroke roughly scratched in, a black spot, a streak of light, is sufficient to form a personage who lives, who moves, and whose physiognomy remains for ever impressed upon your memory. The bulls and horses, although sometimes fabulous in their proportions, have an expression of life and vigour which is often wanting in the works of animal painters by profession: the exploits of Gazul, of the Cid, of Charles V., of Romero, of the Student of Falces, and of Pepe Illo, who perished miserably in the arena, are traced with a truthfulness altogether Spanish. Like the "Caprichos," the plates of the "Tauromaquia" are executed in aquatinta, touched with aquafortis.
The "Scenes of the Invasion" would afford matter for a curious comparison with the "Horrors of War," by Callot. They consist of one long series of persons hanged, heaps of dead being stripped of all they possess, women being violated, wounded persons being carried away, prisoners being shot, convents being sacked, a population in the act of flight, families reduced to beggary, and patriots being strangled; all represented with such fantastic accessories and so exorbitant an aspect as would lead any one to suppose that he was looking at an invasion of Tartars in the fourteenth century. But what delicacy, what a profound knowledge of anatomy, is displayed in all these groups, which seem to owe their existence to mere chance and the whim of the etching-needle! Does the antique Niobe surpass in depth of desolation and nobleness of expression that mother kneeling in the midst of her family before the French bayonets? Among these drawings, which admit of an easy explanation, there is one fearfully terrible and mysterious, the meaning of which, that we can dimly understand, fills you with horror and affright. It is a corpse, half-buried in the earth; it is supporting itself on its elbow, and, without looking at what it is writing, traces with its bony hand, on a paper placed near it, one word—Nada (nothingness)—which is alone worth the most terrible things Dante ever penned. Around its head, on which there is just enough flesh left to render it more frightful than a mere skull, flit, scarcely visible in the darkness of the night, a number of monstrous spectres, lighted up here and there by flashes of livid lightning. A fatidical hand holds a pair of scales, which are in the act of turning upside down. Can you conceive anything more sinister or more heartrending?
At the very conclusion of his life, which was a long one, for he was more than eighty when he died at Bordeaux, Goya improvised upon stone some lithographic sketches, entitled "Dibersion de España," and representing bull-fights. Even in these plates, traced by the hand of an old man, who had long been deaf, and who was almost blind, you can still perceive the vigour and movement of the Caprichos and the Tauromaquia. It is a most curious thing that these lithographs remind you very much of the style of Eugène Delacroix, in his illustrations to Faust.
In Goya's tomb is buried ancient Spanish art, all the world, which has now for ever disappeared, of torreros, majos, manolas, monks, smugglers, robbers, alguazils, and sorceresses; in a word, all the local colour of the Peninsula. He came just in time to collect and perpetuate these various classes. He thought that he was merely producing so many capricious sketches, when he was in truth drawing the portrait and writing the history of the Spain of former days, under the belief that he was serving the ideas and creed of modern times. His caricatures will soon be looked upon in the light of historical monuments.
CHAPTER VIII.
VISIT TO THE ESCURIAL.
Aridity and Desolation of the Country—First View of the Escurial—Sombre appearance of the building—The Church—The blind Cicerone—The Pantheon Pictures—Anecdote of Spanish Robbers.