Francisco Goya: Mortal Designs

I

Like the young goat that gives the Capri­chos their name, these etch­ings, unpre­dictable as goats leap­ing from boul­der to boul­der among the hills, evoke the painter Fran­cis­co Goya who made them after a sud­den ill­ness. At the height of his fame, he falls into a coma, close to death. The doc­tors have no diag­no­sis. He fights his way back and comes to him­self, forty-six years old, deaf, rid­den by the weight of things. His etch­ings unveil a prophet­ic vision, a lone­li­ness like no oth­er, and when they become known years after Goya’s death — timeless.

II

Court painter to King Car­los IV, Goya is nursed back to health by a wealthy friend. Ene­mies at court spread rumors … expect­ed not to sur­vive. At least, he’ll nev­er paint again, they say. He ridicules them as soon as he can pick up a brush, paints small can­vas­es, like a jeweler’s uncut stones, reflec­tions of the night­mare he has lived through, and the inner world his pas­sion unveils, a dark core in which the abo­rig­i­nal being is close to extinc­tion. ​“Cab­i­net” paint­ings of real dis­as­ters; exact details for those who have eyes to see: a ship­wreck, bod­ies washed ashore; a pic­a­dor impaled on a bull’s horn like meat on a spit; a coach way­laid by high­way­men, dead pas­sen­gers bleed­ing on the ground; guards in a mad­house mur­der­ing their pris­on­ers, the liv­ing dead. In these works the painter embraces his iso­la­tion, lets his night­mares dri­ve his art. He absorbs the shock of deaf­ness, por­trays him­self as an Every­man who refus­es to be trapped in a fail­ing body. He returns to work, more con­fi­dent in his gift. The hand does not lie. ​“There are no rules in paint­ing,” he writes. The lib­er­at­ed eye speaks the truth and ​“makes known what God has cre­at­ed … the imi­ta­tion of divine nature.”

III

Cab­i­net paint­ings and final­ly a large-scale paint­ing that turns the con­ven­tions of the church cupo­la upside-down. A dec­o­ra­tive fres­co, por­traits of peo­ple look­ing down, real peo­ple in the dome look­ing down at angels at the four cor­ners of the earth. None of them sun­less, winged crea­tures, they’re real young women — vivid as the neighbor’s daugh­ter. Goya lands like a bird in the nest, piano and strings play­ing in every­thing he touch­es; the ends of his fin­gers play­ing their rhymes. The cupo­la is ded­i­cat­ed to Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua, a priest who saved his own father by rais­ing a wit­ness from the dead to prove his inno­cence before the court. The leg­end drew crowds to hear his ser­mons, imag­in­ing such elo­quence can rule the under­world. His church — where the apos­tles come alive. When Saint Antho­ny of Pad­ua died chil­dren cried in the street.

The cupo­la shapes Goya’s mor­tal designs. An illu­mi­na­tion with­out words. The Saint in the clouds needs mate­r­i­al things to sanc­ti­fy, singing prais­es of the earth below where beau­ty is born.

IV

Beau­ty sur­vives, knead­ed into the dough of pop­u­lar leg­ends. Goya paints six small can­vas­es, a com­ic strip of a rumor repeat­ed at every street cor­ner. A fri­ar car­ry­ing his sad­dle bags begs for alms at a big coun­try house. The inhab­i­tants are locked in a back room, hands tied behind their backs by a ban­dit whose sin­gle-hand­ed dar­ing is leg­endary. The fri­ar at the door, look­ing the ban­dit in the eye, grabs his mus­ket with both hands. Hard­ened by a beggar’s out­door life, he wrests the gun out of the bandit’s hands and shoots him in the butt with his own gun. ​“Ah father,” says the ban­dit, ​“who would have thought you would betray me thus?…” ​“Alas ami­go, though I showed humil­i­ty on the out­side, on the inside I pos­sessed all the anger of God.” The crim­i­nal on the ground, hands tied behind his back, awaits the hangman’s noose. A hero sto­ry in tune with the times. The inno­cent tri­umph. Good over­comes evil.

V

His world upside-down, Goya’s engrav­ings of mules rid­ing on the backs of the poor tell the sto­ry of a king­dom weighed down by its after­birth, drag­ging a pri­mal mul­ish­ness on the ground. The blind­ness of the aris­toc­ra­cy as the empire rots under their feet. Eyes are deaf, minds are blind. The court painter sees it from both sides. By the light of the pop­u­lar imag­i­na­tion, he hears ghosts in back alleys, Goth­ic romances, haunt­ed man­sions. Goya in the light of rea­son says witch­es, hob­gob­lins, boast­ful giants don’t scare him; he shud­ders at the enter­prise of human malev­o­lence. A griz­zled witch rides with a young fol­low­er, half rot­ten before her time, the two as one, dou­ble-mount­ed on a broom by bat-light. Fear rules the night. A broom in the dark kitchen cor­ner shifts behind your back. Farm­yard ani­mals wag bloat­ed snouts as the shad­ows length­en. Goya paints a giant Bil­ly-goat lead­ing a dance of wor­ship­pers. Male witch­es fly over­head, devour­ing the liv­ing flesh of a male offer­ing — vam­pire witch­es feast­ing on blood. He writes a friend with dou­ble-edged ven­om, ​“witch­es are as real as cats.” Vio­lence stains the streets where toughs pro­tect their hon­or with the sword, and the weak hope to pass unno­ticed. Witch­es as real as cats — the king­dom reeks with the smell of blood. Goya eyes things in the air he breathes. Ghosts don’t scare him. He fears hold-ups on any coun­try road in broad daylight.

VI

Goya paints for aris­to­crats who rule over vast estates, a few great fam­i­lies pass­ing down their palaces from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion like feu­dal king­doms. He loves hunt­ing and can match the stead­i­est hands shot for shot. Love of killing birds on the wing cre­ates a bond to the Duke of Osuna. The Duke and Duchess rep­re­sent the avant garde wing of the Span­ish Enlight­en­ment, and the artist is drawn into their orbit. María Jose­fa de la Soledad, Duchess of Osuna, pos­es for her por­trait. The painter’s mag­ic focus­es on an in-depth study of char­ac­ter. She steps right out of the frame, the finest cloths in the world woven into her gown. She wears her fam­i­ly name as the finest orna­ment of all. The Duchess trusts Goya to paint her with immac­u­late real­ism. Face and body are long and thin. The aquiline nose ends in a snub. Her chin is long and dim­pled. The expres­sion in her eyes is direct, full of con­fi­dence. The artist has not stretched the truth. She is no beau­ty but unmis­tak­ably a great lady.

Goya’s rela­tion­ship with anoth­er great lady verges on the sen­ti­men­tal. The leg­end of the beau­ti­ful young Duchess of Alba is linked in pop­u­lar lore with the great artist, a social nobody, the pride of the Majo, a man of the peo­ple. He keeps a por­trait of the Duchess, dressed in black for her hus­band, hid­den in his stu­dio. The wid­ow points impe­ri­ous­ly at the ground. In the soil one reads the mys­ti­fy­ing inscrip­tion, ​“Only Goya.” When the por­trait comes to light after the artist’s death it con­firms the leg­end. Alba’s fam­i­ly pride is a state of oil and water in per­pet­u­al motion. She’s known as a law unto her­self and likes to appear in pub­lic dressed up as a Maja, but the heart of the cha­rade is a pas­toral romance, ancient as time.

VII

The Capri­chos ring with the need to step out­side one­self and proph­esy. Extreme tax­a­tion killed the vil­lages clos­est to the soil and left the coun­try­side bar­ren. The artist’s step is lighter than air, his gift like a sun and moon shin­ing with­in him. He observes the cross­roads of the cap­i­tal; there every­thing is for sale. A street­walk­er ped­dles her wares on the avenue where passers­by take her pres­ence for grant­ed. An old crone, bent halfway to the ground by hunger, tugs at her gown for a few spare coins. The young woman is glanc­ing behind her. Goya scrawls on the etch­ing, ​“God for­give her: and it was her moth­er.” An ordi­nary street scene. Nobody pays any atten­tion. The artist con­veys form and mean­ing by the beauty’s shoes. Some alche­my of his own. Shoes point­ed in oppo­site direc­tions, her thighs ready to spread wide apart. The slight­est frac­tion of an inch marks the dif­fer­ence between one pair of ele­gant shoes and anoth­er. None of the passers­by mis­take the pros­ti­tute for an heiress.

VIII

The artist revers­es the still life. Genre paint­ing takes its designs out of nature, con­flat­ing the beau­ti­ful and the pret­ty. Goya paints flow­ers, veg­eta­bles, meat, fish with scrupu­lous real­ism. Bod­ies piled up on the butcher’s block, flow­ers wilt­ing in a vase. In his func­tion as a truth-teller, he etch­es head­less corpses and body parts strung up in a tree, among the count­less dis­as­ters of war. His gift renews con­stant sur­pris­es. Free­dom to paint a wild bird on the butcher’s block, scruffy and stiff with rig­or mor­tis. The same for the human ani­mal. No mean­ing but the dis­ci­pline of art and the painter’s knowl­edge of the body, all its pos­tures and blemishes.

The hand of the past appears in a hard light. Draw­ings of vic­tims shack­led to the wall in imag­i­nary dun­geons. A cos­tume dra­ma in a paint­ing of a court in ses­sion. The Inqui­si­tion in its hey­day when a sum­mons to appear often meant a death sen­tence. Pris­on­ers accused of heresy wear the coroza, a cone-shaped dunce cap. The Lec­tor is read­ing the charges before the court. The Chief Mag­is­trate on the bench nods, yawn­ing with bore­dom, since the ver­dict has been decid­ed in advance. Below him two monks lis­ten intent­ly — func­tionar­ies known as ​“God’s hounds.” A mass of view­ers crowd the pub­lic bench­es. An audi­ence of ordi­nary peo­ple beset by buried mem­o­ries of pris­on­ers shack­led to stone walls. Goya draws hun­dreds of sketch­es, warn­ings of past and future vio­lence in the Kingdom.

IX

The etch­ings backed by a mul­ti­tude of sketch­es com­pose vision-essays, declar­ing rad­i­cal out­rage. An illus­tra­tion remem­bers the past when women were con­vict­ed of heresy ​“for hav­ing been born else­where,” and thou­sands of Protes­tants, refus­ing to renounce their faith, died at the stake. Mul­ti-lev­eled works of art, sound­ing voic­es whose protest endures. The artist uses oth­er fac­ul­ties, sen­su­al­i­ty sharp­ened by deaf­ness, vibra­tions unknown to oth­ers. The mer­ci­less bells of the Inqui­si­tion are echo­ing. Star­va­tion in war-time, a woman in the city, despair­ing, becomes a nun. Tax­a­tion wast­ing the vil­lages. A peas­ant unable to feed his fam­i­ly drops his hoe on the ground and looks up to heav­en. Goya writes, ​“cry­ing will get you nowhere.” A woman and child are kid­napped on a coun­try road by a man with a knife. ​“God save us from such a fate.” Killing blends into the nat­ur­al land­scape. In Los Dis­parates, ​“the Fol­lies,” an expe­ri­enced swords­man is pit­ted against a younger foe. Each instinc­tive­ly gath­ers all his forces —“A Duel to the Death” — the elder’s cun­ning ver­sus the youth’s speed­i­er reflex­es. A sud­den moment before the remains of the day.

X

Let­ting go, he holds on. The wind car­ries him back in time He rebuilds, replac­ing shin­gles on a roof. Sees down through the base­ment floor and holds on to the gift. His hand impos­es its own bot­tom line. He fol­lows his call­ing — finds the courage not to curse beau­ty in the midst of war. Beau­ty lives side by side with can­ni­bal­ism. Hero­ism needs the guil­lo­tine. They’re twinned in his mind.

XI

Napoleon comes into the coun­try to aid the fail­ing Span­ish King, but when the French squadrons are in posi­tion the Emper­or shows his real inten­tions. He makes his old­er broth­er the new King of Spain. A guer­ril­la war engulfs the nation for six years. Goya helps shape an atmos­phere, turn­ing the Penin­su­lar War into a nation­al epic. He paints a human ​“Colos­sus,” a giant ema­na­tion ris­ing from the Span­ish soil. On the plain below him, tiny paint­ed fig­ures scur­ry in all direc­tions. The cru­sade spreads while Span­ish troops are still fight­ing the invad­ing army. In the people’s war moth­ers defend their chil­dren with kitchen knives and home-made trun­cheons. Goya’s etch­ings in ​“The Dis­as­ters of War” are too real to be shown in pub­lic — urgent bul­letins he keeps to him­self, things he saw or heard on the grape-vine about human ani­mals, truths more sav­age than any­thing he could invent.

XII

A pub­lic record appears in his paint­ings. Gueril­la fight­ers in the woods pre­pare to ambush mount­ed sol­diers, then merge back into their vil­lages, an entire­ly new design, under­ground resis­tance. In the coun­try­side a woman car­ries her water jug to the Span­ish troops still fight­ing. A vil­lage black­smith, the sparks fly­ing from his forge, ham­mers out the future. An itin­er­ant knife grinder car­ries the inex­orable rota­tion of his wheel from vil­lage to vil­lage, a peas­ant defy­ing Napoleon’s blood hounds.

Goya doesn’t believe bat­tle enno­bles. It’s a patri­ot­ic myth to snare young recruits. He con­fess­es him­self capa­ble of the same sins. We are all wild ani­mals. Killing is embed­ded in the human psy­che. The tor­sos with­out limbs, the sev­ered heads hang­ing on a tree wear no uni­forms. An artist for all occa­sions, he has a warn­ing for colo­nial empires. An ora­cle whose time has not yet come. Deaf­ness adds oth­er cours­es. Goya the artist stays above the bat­tle and con­ceives epic can­vas­es. An indif­fer­ent fire. The gods with­in real­ize their own exis­tence. All the sens­es height­ened by ter­ror. Napoleon’s Mamelukes, wear­ing white tur­bans, halos of a for­eign legion killing every­one in their way, mer­ce­nar­ies stamp­ing out ants. The artist’s faith calls him as a wit­ness. Truth and beau­ty roll along, sunspots gen­er­at­ing solar winds. Empires rot on the ground. The sky unfurls wings of dark­ness over Spain.

XIII

Beyond the ​“Dis­as­ters of War,” Goya paints big can­vas­es of the rebel­lion on the 2^nd and 3^rd of May 1808. The first paint­ing cap­tures the fren­zy of bat­tle by imi­tat­ing chaos. For­mal form­less­ness. Fury and revenge in bat­tle con­ceal­ing none of the excesses.

The painter hon­ors life itself in the 3^rd of May can­vas. An imper­son­al fir­ing squad exe­cutes a peas­ant with his arms spread high, glar­ing and defi­ant, the dead piled on the ground around him, an unknown Christ on the cross. Goya designs a paint­ing cooked in a new way that looks raw. The com­po­si­tion makes an indeli­ble impres­sion. A scene that pro­vides details an eye-wit­ness might remem­ber, nei­ther too many nor too few. A syn­the­sis of all-encom­pass­ing real­i­ty. Every­thing in the world is on fire. The mate­r­i­al world is on fire: the tame and the wild in a bull fight; the bloody spikes. The cru­ci­fix­ion is on fire.

XIV

Goya real­izes his own dark core of lone­li­ness, the liv­ing dead in the under­world. A key Capri­cho says ​“The sleep of rea­son pro­duces mon­sters.” The ani­mals in the etch­ing — bats, owls, lynx — appear as sym­bols and images. A man of the Enlight­en­ment, Goya empha­sizes the bal­ance between night­mares and wak­ing in the light of day, every­thing stark­ly high­light­ed in this most back­ward of empires, the painter back­lit and lapped by fan­tasies, myths, as his art takes fire. The com­plex­i­ties of fable and real­i­ty spin­ning like a top.

The romance of the genius Goya and the beau­ti­ful young Duchess of Alba takes root in the earth. Gone to a dis­tant coun­try in France, sight fail­ing, the painter effaces him­self. ​“All I’ve got left is will.” He is an instru­ment, sketch­ing minia­tures. An old man on a swing, his horny feet pump­ing high in the air, lips in a crazy grin. A leg­less beg­gar rid­ing on a cart, undaunt­ed, mouth open in an ​“o.” A burly dancer called Fire spread­ing his arms, stub­by fin­gers high in the air over no-man’s‑land.