Francisco Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819-23

I first encountered this piece on my first day of English class during my sophomore year. For quite awhile after that, I doubted my English teacher's sanity. Just a little bit. It immediately deterred me, and I couldn't like it. It still sits taped onto the wall behind where I sit in class.

Goya's paintings have proved the most difficult for me to stomach. Something about the way he portrays life and people in his later pieces disturbs me. Saturn's skin tone here is sickly and uneven, his wide eyes bugging out of his face. He seems driven mad by his horrific act, such desperation in his expression as he grips to the bloody form of his son, white-knuckled and ferocious. Saturn doesn't seem guilty, doesn't seem conflicted about his actions. It's all to preserve himself and his power at all costs, even his own flesh and blood. It's painful to view.

The back story of the piece is equally offputting. Goya came to live in a home called the Quinta del Sordo, or Villa of the Deaf Man, named after its past owner. After contracting a fever about 20 years prior, Goya became deaf, so the name of the home fit him as well. In this very home, Goya created a series of 14 works painted with oil right onto the walls of the property. This piece was one of six in the dining room. Goya had survived two life-threatening illnesses in his life, and the pieces in the house depict an awareness of mortality and a disturbed, dark outlook of life never meant to be seen by the public. These pieces now make up his Black Paintings, named by others after Goya's death, not by him.

The challenging part for is how truthfully Goya imbues this piece with the horror and malevolence held within wherever he pulled these pieces from. It's difficult to analyze something so personal, so cruel, but so beautiful in its own dark right. In my opinion, this piece is one of Goya's greatest. But I cannot like it or say that I personally enjoy viewing it. The darker side of humanity so expertly, desperately portrayed here is not something I've had to experience in such a visual way. The naked Saturn is both so vulnerable and so cruel, making me question the purpose Goya meant for this piece - if he had ever wanted anyone to see this dark scene or any of the others found in his home, or if he even meant for Saturn to seem a bit like himself. Questions unanswered, of course.