“Saturn Devouring His Son” by Francisco Goya

“Saturn Devouring His Son” by Francisco Goya depicts the Greek myth of the Titan, who fears that he would be overthrown by one of his children, so he ate each one of his children upon their birth.

The work is one of the 14 Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823. It was transferred to the canvas after Goya’s death and has since been held in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

The Roman myth was inspired by the original Greek mythology, in which it had been foretold that one of the sons of Saturn (Cronus is his name in the Greek original myth) would overthrow him, just as Saturn had overthrown his father.

To prevent this, Saturn ate his children moments after each was born. His wife Ops eventually hid his third son, Jupiter, on the island of Crete, and deceived Saturn by offering a stone wrapped in swaddling in his place.

Jupiter eventually supplanted his father Saturn, just as the prophecy had predicted.

In 1819, at the age of 73, Goya purchased a house outside the center of Madrid, where he sought seclusion. Goya produced a series of 14 works, which he painted with oils directly onto the walls of the house.

At this stage of his life, Goya had survived two life-threatening illnesses; he had been left deaf after contracting a fever in 1792 and was concerned with his mortality.

He was also increasingly embittered and concerned by the civil strife occurring in Spain.

Although he initially decorated the rooms of the house with more inspiring images, he overpainted them all with the haunting pictures known today as the Black Paintings. Uncommissioned and never meant for public display, these pictures reflect Goya’s darkening mood and internal conflict.

This disturbing portrait was one of six works with which Goya decorated the dining room. Goya never named the works he produced on his house walls.

Others assigned the names to his paintings after his death, and this painting is also known as Saturn, Saturn Devouring One of His Sons, and Saturn Devouring his Children.

Francisco Goya

Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes (1746 – 1828) was a Spanish painter and printmaker. He was the most important Spanish artist of the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

Goya was famously successful in his lifetime, the last of the Old Masters and the first of the moderns.

He was born to a modest family in Aragon, Spain, and started studying painting from the age of 14. He married at the age of 27, and after a series of pregnancies and miscarriages, only one child, a son, survived into adulthood.

Goya became the court painter to the Spanish Crown in 1786. This early part of his career is marked by portraits of the Spanish aristocracy and royalty and Rococo style tapestry cartoons designed for the royal palace.

Goya suffered a severe illness in 1793, which left him deaf. Sick and disillusioned, his work became progressively darker and pessimistic. His later paintings, prints, and drawings seem to reflect a bleaker outlook.

In 1807 Napoleon led the French army into war against Spain. Goya remained in Madrid during the war, which seems to have affected him deeply.

Other works from this mid-period of his life and work include a variety of paintings concerned with insanity, mental asylums, witches, fantastical creatures, and religious and political corruption.

All of which suggests that he feared for both his country’s fate and his own psychological and physical health.

In Goya’s late period, he was disillusioned by the political and social developments in Spain, and he lived in near isolation.

Goya eventually abandoned Spain in 1824 to retire to the French city of Bordeaux, accompanied by his younger maid and his companion.

Following a stroke that left him paralyzed on his right side and suffering failing eyesight, he died and was buried in 1828, aged 82.

His body was later re-interred in Madrid. Famously, however, Goya’s skull went missing, a detail the Spanish consul in France immediately communicated to his superiors in Madrid.

The Spanish authorities wired back, “Send Goya, with or without the head.”

Saturn Devouring His Son

Title: Saturn Devouring His Son
Artist: Francisco Goya
Year: 1819-1823
Medium: Oil on panel
Dimensions: 146 × 83 cm (57½ × 32½ in)
Museum: Prado Museum, Museo del Prado

Francisco Goya

Name: Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Birth: 1746 – Fuendetodos, Aragon, Spain
Died: 1828 (aged 82) – Bordeaux, France
Nationality: Spanish
Movement: Romanticism
Notable Works:
- The Third of May 1808
- The Repentant St. Peter
- Saturn Devouring His Son
- Portrait of Doña Antonia Zárate
- Portrait of Doña Isabel de Porcel
- The Second of May 1808 – The Charge of the Mamelukes