It all seemed to be going swimmingly for Francisco Goya – until his nervous breakdown in 1792. After that, he is credited with tearing up the rule book and reinventing what art can and should do and what it means to be human.
He had been court painter to the Spanish royal family, who admired the rococo tapestries he had designed for the royal court in Madrid. So they invited Goya to paint their portraits, and in the great tradition of telling it like it is, he did just that. The result was a display of royal mockery never seen before in the history of art. And yet, somehow he got away with it. Flattery was not to be found on Goya’s CV.
The Parasol, a tapestry design painted by Goya, c1777
But the evil and the stupidity he saw in the world around him soon came to the surface in his art. The catalyst for this was the nervous breakdown and physical illness that he suffered in the early 1790’s. The exact nature of Goya’s illness has never been properly diagnosed but it left him functionally deaf and in fear of his own sanity. Suddenly the light has gone out in his art and darkness has crept in as he explored the depths of his own imagination.
An example is “St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Impenitent” of 1795. From the saint's crucifix spurt drops of blood that land on the sinner's torso. This painting is thought to represent Goya’s growing disillusionment with Christianity and its inability to explain the inhumanity in the world.
St Francis Borgia Attending a Dying Penitent, 1795, oil on canvas
In 1794, Goya painted the “Casa De Locos (The Madhouse)”, a stone gaol where all manner of appalling acts are being witnessed. It is thought that these works represented, at least in part, all of Goya’s disappointments with the world around him.
Casa De Locos (The Madhouse). 1794, oil on panel
Around 1794, Goya painted “Yard With Lunatics”. “The work stands as a horrifying and imaginary vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation, a departure from the rather more superficial treatment of mental illness in the works of earlier artists such as Hogarth.” Wikipedia
From commissioned portraitist, Goya had made the remarkable transformation into an artist exploring his own bleak view of the world. He claimed the painting is based on something he witnessed in Zaragoza where a yard was filled with lunatics, and two of them were fighting completely naked while their warder beats them.
Yard With Lunatics, 1794, oil on tinplate
In his book “Goya”, written shortly after his near death experience on a highway near Broome, Western Australia, author Robert Hughes discusses the profound isolation that engulfed Goya as a result of his deafness. “Any trauma makes you think of worse trauma. It sets the mind worrying and fantasizing about what else might be in store, and whether you can bear it if it comes.” And with Goya’s illness not being properly diagnosed, he had no idea if the illness was temporary or permanent and what impact it would have on his career. And all this was exacerbated by his increasing deafness.
Self Portrait, c.1815, oil on canvas
Hughes tells us that the eighteenth century was the heyday of the prison as isolator, long before the concept of prison as a reformatory was to creep into minds of European governments. Whilst madhouses were even worse because no one had any idea of how to treat the mad, so they were simply dumping grounds for the psychotic, the deranged and the wayward. No doubt, this fed into Goya’s exploration of the dark side of human existence.
What was to follow of course, was his famous Caprichos, his disasters of war series (inspired by Napoleon’s invasion of Spain) and the black paintings of his final years. Interestingly, Spain went into a coma (artistically speaking) for over 50 years following Goya’s death in 1828. Perhaps his successors were intimidated by the sheer power and darkness of his vision.
References;
Rococo - BBC TV
Something Wicked This Way Comes - The Independent
Wikipedia