Goya's Prison: - Red Square Design

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6 10 The Picnic Francisco de Goya 1788 Oil on canvas 41 x 25.8cm London, The National Gallery A sketch for one of a series of cartoons for tapestries ordered by Charles III to decorate the Bedchamber of the Infantas at the Palace of El Pardo. The King died in 1788 and the project was abandoned. 11 Venus presenting Arms to Aeneas Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1766) c.1753-62 Oil on canvas 153 x 115cm The Bowes Museum The intellectual centre of artistic life in Madrid was the Royal Academy of San Fernando. The teaching programme was based on the example of the French Academy. During Goya’s early career it was heavily influenced by the Bohemian-born artist Anton Raphael Mengs (1728-1779), who established himself in Madrid from 1761 following a successful period in Italy, where he had become leader of the Neoclassical style of painting. Mengs arrived in Madrid at the invitation of the Spanish King Charles III and, during his terms of office as Court Painter, he reformed the academic system, encouraging greater emphasis on classical form and principles. Under Mengs’ influence the Academy’s library was filled with classical texts, casts after classical statues and prints of classical buildings. Although Goya reacted adversely to Mengs’ approach to the teaching of art, it was nevertheless Mengs he had to thank for his initial break into the higher echelons of Madrid’s artistic elite. It was on Mengs‘ recommendation that Goya, following his arrival in Madrid in 1775, was offered work at the Royal Tapestry Factory of Santa Barbara, to which Mengs had been appointed Director. Whilst Mengs’ dry, academic Neoclassicism did not appeal to Goya’s artistic sensibilities, he was more appreciative of the work of two Italian masters of the Rococo, who, like Mengs, received royal commissions in Madrid: the Venetian Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and Corrado Giaquinto from Naples. (Fig.11) Giaquinto was in Madrid between 1753 and 61, while Tiepolo arrived in 1762 and remained until his death in 1770. (Fig.12) What Goya absorbed from them as he worked on tapestry commissions was the Rococo’s exuberant celebration of fantasy and caprice. This they expressed in the dramatic frescoes and ceiling decorations for the royal palaces that Goya would have been able to study at first hand. A century later their work was to appeal to the taste of John and Joséphine Bowes, who acquired Giaquinto’s Venus Presenting Arms to Aeneas at the Conde de Quinto’s sale of 1862, and Tiepolo’s The Harnessing of the Horses of the Sun, which entered the collection by 1877. Soon after his speech to the Academy, late in 1792, Goya left Madrid, heading south to Andalusia. He was ill, but none of his medical friends could identify the cause. All he knew was that he was suffering from terrible noises in his head, severe dizziness, loss of balance and, for a while, an inability to walk up or down stairs without feeling nauseous. His eyesight was failing him and he regularly fainted. Goya’s <strong>Prison</strong> – the Year of Despair
Whatever the cause, Goya’s unfathomable illness left him profoundly deaf. Whilst the origins of his ailment have been speculated on at length – syphilis or meningitis being amongst the two most popular theories – all that is certain is that, as he approached middle age, Goya found himself in an isolated, alien world, with his ability to communicate all but destroyed. What added to the mystery of Goya’s affliction was the fact that his brother-in-law and colleague at the tapestry factory, the painter and tapestry designer Ramón Bayeu, fell ill at the same time. Born in 1746, the same year as Goya, he died in March 1793, as the latter was beginning to recover. Goya spent his convalescence at the home of Sebastian Martinez, a wine exporter based in Cadiz. (Fig.13) Martinez was a self-made man and one of Spain’s major private art collectors. He owned a large collection of prints by European artists and was particularly interested in English painters, all of which Goya was able to absorb during his stay. This period of study was to influence Goya’s approach to portraiture, having spent time looking at prints after Romney, Reynolds and Gainsborough at close hand, as well as engravings after Hogarth. 12 The Harnessing of the Horses of the Sun Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) c.1731 Oil on canvas 98 x 74cm The Bowes Museum As a new year dawned, Goya’s school friend from Saragossa, the wealthy merchant, Martin Zapater, responded to a letter from Martinez in Cadiz: 7 “Your letter of the fifth of this month has left me as worried about our friend Goya as the first I received, and since the nature of his malady is of the most fearful, I am forced to think with melancholy about his recuperation.” 7 By March 1793, whilst Goya’s overall condition had improved, he was clearly still unwell. Now able to write to Zapater himself, Goya exclaimed: “My dear soul, I can stand on my own feet, but so poorly that I don’t know if my head is on my shoulders; I have no appetite or desire to do anything at all.” 8 A few weeks later Martinez updated Zapater on the extent of his guest’s recovery: “… our Goya is getting on slowly but there is some improvement … The noise in his head and his deafness are just the same, but his sight is much better and he is no longer affected by the dizziness that made him lose his balance. He is already going up and down stairs very well and in fact is doing things that he would not do before.” 9 13 Don Sebastián Martínez y Pérez Francisco de Goya 1792 Oil on canvas 93 x 67.6cm New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art One of his finest portraits Goya depicts Sebastián Martínez, the patron who supported him during his months of illness. It is dated 1792 and so must have been painted just prior to the onset of Goya’s disease. Martínez sits holding a letter with the dedicatory inscription: ‘Don Sebastián Martínez, from his friend Goya.’ Goya’s <strong>Prison</strong> – the Year of Despair
Page 1: Goya’s Prison: the Year of Despai
Page 4 and 5: Chairman’s Foreword In 1892 when
Page 6 and 7: Whilst The Bowes purchased works fr
Page 10 and 11: 8 14 Sorting the Bulls Francisco de
Page 12: 10 17 Imaginary Prisons; The Man on
Page 16 and 17: Clearly Goya was striving to get hi
Page 18 and 19: Reading a Masterpiece Whilst the su
Page 20 and 21: Exhibited Madrid, Liceo Artistico y
Page 22 and 23: Reading a Masterpiece This warm and
Page 24 and 25: Exhibited Madrid, Liceo Artistico y
Page 26 and 27: Reading a Masterpiece Obsequio á e
Page 28 and 29: 26 Goya’s Prison - the Year of De
Page 30 and 31: Chronology 28 1746 30 March, Franci
Page 32 and 33: Notes 1 For a fuller discussion of
Page 34: 32 Goya’s Prison - the Year of De

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