Lecture 39: Neoclassicism and the Birth of Romanticism
the North African mounted troops of Napoleon—in the streets of Madrid.
That painting is a scene of chaos and carnage, a record of a spontaneous
and essentially barbaric uprising against the totally surprised invaders. By
contrast, The Third of May is tautly, starkly organized—and utterly horri¿ c.
Illuminated by a large lantern in the center, a group of men is lined up
against a night background, with a city in the distance. They are about to be
executed. The members of the ¿ ring squad are lined up on a diagonal, but
their faces are unseen; they are anonymous. Goya spares us nothing. We see
a dead body in the foreground, the earth stained with blood, men in abject
terror, and one who has become physically ill from fear. One heroic ¿ gure
stands in full light at the center; he seems intended as a Christ ¿ gure.Our next work is Tampoco, an etching from Goya’s series of The Disasters
of War, a set of 83 etching and aquatint plates completed about 1815 but not
published until 1863. The title is translated “Not [in this case] either,” which
is understandable only if one knows the preceding etching, showing another
execution, called “Nobody knows why.” Here, the of¿ cer contemplates his
hanging victim with satisfaction; other hanged men are behind. This is one
of the mildest of The Disasters of War, and the cumulative horror of the
etchings is increased by the numbed monotone of their captions.We turn to a comparison between Rubens’s Saturn Devouring his Son (1636)
and Goya’s treatment of the same subject. In Greek legend, Mother Earth
prophesied that one of Saturn’s sons would overthrow him; to avoid this fate,
Saturn devours all his children except Zeus, whose mother saved him. Saturn
was also confused with Cronos, the god of time, and thus, the image can be
read as Time devouring his young—that is, aging and death. In mythology,
the story marks a transition from chaos to an orderly universe; Classical
Humanists understood this transition. Rubens, for example, gives his
painting, despite its gore, a Classical distance, a certain dignity that makes it
bearable. Goya, who certainly knew the Rubens and knew the mythological
signi¿ cance as well, was having none of it when he painted his version:
Saturn Devouring One of his Sons (18191823). This image is horrible
beyond most imaginings. It is a statement about man’s innate barbarity, about
our capacity to kill one another, about our madness—because this Saturn is
clearly insane.