Francisco Goya, the Spanish artist, started life painting religious scenes, court portraits and rural idylls before descending into darker subjects as his pessimism about human behaviour and a repressive political situation clouded his optimism.
His etchings, the Caprichos, depicted what he described as “the innumerable foibles and follies to be found in any civilized society, and from the common prejudices and deceitful practices which custom, ignorance, or self-interest have made usual”.
A serious illness that left him deaf in his forties sent him into even darker realms of fantasy nightmare. Yard with Lunatics is a vision of loneliness, fear and social alienation. The condemnation of brutality towards prisoners focused on the degradation of the human figure. From an earlier search for ideal beauty, he descended through a nervous breakdown into paintings that reflected his self-doubt, anxiety and fear.
He had several children, only one of who survived to adulthood, which many scholars believe influenced his later, melancholic themes. By the time of his wife’s death in 1812, he was preparing the etchings known as The Disasters of War, regarded as a visual protest against the violence of the period and the move against liberalism in the aftermath of the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy in 1814. The scenes are singularly disturbing, sometimes macabre in their depiction of battlefield horror, and represent an outraged conscience in the face of death and destruction. His scenes of atrocities, starvation, degradation and humiliation have been described as the “prodigious flowering of rage”.
Saturn eating his Children was one of the late Black Paintings from the last years of his life, with his embittered attitude toward the move away from liberalism and his own mental panic, terror, fear and hysteria expressed in shocking detail.
He was born 30 March 1748 in Spain (at 11.30am according to Andre Barbault though I am not so sure.)
He had an Aries Sun conjunct Venus and Mercury opposition Saturn square a sensitive Moon Neptune in Cancer. His Sun opposition Saturn formed a talented Half Grand Sextile to Jupiter in Sagittarius and Uranus in Aquarius. He also had a difficult yod of Pluto in Scorpio sextile South Node inconjunct Mars in Aries.
His emphasised Saturn in Libra square Neptune would be idealistic, hoping for improvements in social conditions and behaviour as well as progress politically away from hierarchical, repressive regimes. But he would also be drawn to the darker, ruthless energies represented by his Mars inconjunct Pluto and the lack of development towards fair and just times by his South Node in Virgo. His personal tragedies and illness, never mind the social/political situation would also undermine his faith (Pisces North Node).
When his illness descended tr Uranus was tugging at one leg of his yod, conjunct Pluto which would send his life onto a different track. His Solar Arc Neptune was moving to conjunct his South Node and his Solar Arc Saturn to conjunct his Jupiter.
His acute disappointment on various fronts sent him into the depths of his tortured unconscious.
Raphael, 27 March 1483 JC 9.30 pm, Urbino, Italy, one of the great masters of an earlier period, also had a Sun Venus in Aries which was in a lively trine to Uranus; and he also had a confident Jupiter Pluto conjunction in Libra trine Mars in Gemini. He had a more upbeat and outgoing chart than Goya, though he did die on his 37th birthday when is Solar Arc Neptune was square his Sun.
Thank you for this. I love how the movie Goya’s Ghosts, with Stellan Skarsgard playing Goya, illuminates his life. Raphael was so full of hope about what humanity, during the Renaissance and after, could become, while Goya, a few hundred years later recognized how hopeless humans are. The Washington Post review of the Raphael exhibition says, “There is in his work a sense of serenity and stillness, an adamantine quietude, that should shame us at the civilizational level, for what we have become, what we threaten to do, what we’ve done with no remorse or regret.”
‘The Dog’ is possibly one of the bleakest of the Black Paintings. Sometimes called ‘The Drowning Dog’. Goya loved dogs and painted them throughout his life. ‘The Dog’ in this painting is ambiguous, but has been interpreted as symbolic of humanity in all its desperation and hopelessness.
I have ‘The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters’ on my office room wall, Capricho number 43. It depicts an artist asleep at his desk, surrounded by fantastical bat and bird like creatures. The full quote is: ‘Fantasy, abandoned by reason, produces impossible monsters; united with it, she is the mother of the arts and the origin of marvels.’ These were published in the year 1799, appropriately since Pluto’s ingress into Pisces took place that year, a crossover period in history where the Age of Reason gave way to the Romantic Period. (The publication of William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads occurred in 1798 is commonly cited as the official start of the Romantic movement in literature).
Goya continues to be influential, he inspired artists like Paula Rego and his Sabbath paintings, fims like ‘Haxan’, Sweden, 1922 as well as Robert Eggers’s ‘The VVitch’ 2016. The ending of ‘The VVitch’ is taken from Goya’s ‘Witches in Flight’ 1797-8.
In poor lands, hope is insanity and impossible when for decades and centuries ,it’s all demoralising. What seems dark for civilised world is daily life with worse ,in poor lands.
Someone had rightly tweeted that nuclear explosion in my country won’t be noticed as it’s daily deaths in fire tragedies, normal life.
Saturn rules poverty and poor people in indian astrology so he isn’t taken as wealth provider who is Jupiter. Indeed, saturn doesn’t give till last phase of life and without lifelong toil, unlike jupiter so money doesn’t give happiness ,if saturn gives it