The Washington Post - USA (2022-02-20)

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 20 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ EE E3

BY SEBASTIAN SMEE

Y

ou can just make out a protrud-
ing nose and a single, harrowed
eye amid the dark gloom of the
man’s bowed head and bedrag-
gled beard. His body, in a
gauche, unnatural position, cuts diagonal-
ly across the page. A triangle of pubic hair
is visible through an undergarment, torn
off halfway down his thighs. His sallow
legs are stippled with acid pock marks. His
feet in leg irons are tensed, the toes and
arches curled in quiet incredulity.
Some humans — liberals, conservatives,
mothers, brothers, priests, soldiers; they
come in all stripes — nurse a deep and
abiding desire to humiliate others. I think
they are a small minority. But it’s in the
nature of this minority to seek power —
whether in the form of angry online mobs,
authoritarian institutions or vengeful
armies.
Francisco Goya (1746-1828) was scath-
ing about them. He didn’t care whether
they were Spanish or French, soldiers,
laborers or monks. He had lived through
the Inquisition and the Peninsular War. He
had seen the damage such people could do,
the cruelty they concocted, the horrors
they inflicted.
He made this etching around 1815 —
contemporaneous with his great series
“The Disasters of War” — and gave it the
unusually direct caption: “The custody of a
prisoner does not call for torture.”
That’s a good principle. There’s a lot of
wisdom behind it. It’s amazing to me that,
in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks, it was swiftly set aside by
the CIA and its overseers. They seemed to
think that, in a time of emergency, not
using waterboarding techniques or other
forms of physical and psychological tor-
ment for the sake of a moral principle
could be fatally naive. They failed, I think,
to see that they were the naive ones — that
their treatment of Muslim prisoners would
trigger enough moral disgust to fuel gener-
ations of anti-Americanism around the
world.
Just as alarming is that the principle
stated in Goya’s caption continues to be
ignored by those who use prolonged soli-
tary confinement and similar measures to
torment people in America’s dysfunctional
prison system.
Goya spent a large part of his life
reflecting on torture. He repeatedly etched
and drew men killed by the state, women
unjustly imprisoned and individuals
hauled before the Inquisition and humili-
ated. He gave his images such captions as
“Garroted Man,” “Many Have Ended Up
Like This,” “There was no Remedy” and
“One Can’t Look.”
For Goya, torture was not just an ab-
stract, philosophical matter. The year it is

believed he made this work, he was called

before the Spanish Inquisition — for a

second time — and made to justify his

paintings of a young woman, or maja,

whom he had depicted clothed in one

version and naked in the other. Commis-

sioned by Spain’s powerful Prime Minister

Manuel Godoy, the paintings had been

intended for his private enjoyment. But

they came to light when Godoy’s property

was confiscated after his fall from grace in

1808.

Goya’s defense — that he was simply

working in the long and noble tradition of

the female nude — succeeded. By this time

the Inquisition was enfeebled, its worst

abuses a thing of the past. It had been

abolished in 1808 by Joseph Bonaparte but

reinstated for several more years in 1814 by

Ferdinand VII.

Goya hadn’t necessarily seen the de-

pravity he depicted. He probably invented

much of it. He wanted to align himself with

Spanish Enlightenment (or ilustrado)

thinkers who were critical of the Inquisi-

tion. Among them were Juan Agustín Ceán

Bermúdez, an art collector and writer;

Agustín Argüelles, a liberal politician ac-

tive in debates that led to the abolition of

torture in 1811; and Gaspar Melchor de

Jovellanos, an intellectual and reformist

politician.

It was Jovellanos, wrote Robert Hughes

in his biography of the artist, who did most

to shape Goya’s “vision of a Spain where

the clerics are torpid and self-seeking, the

nobility asinine, [and] the Inquisition a

tyranny of superstition.”

Goya made a portrait of Jovellanos

seated at his desk that is linked (similar

pose, same clothes) to his most famous

etching, from his series “Los Caprichos.” It

shows a man asleep at a desk, surrounded

by bats, cats and owls. Its immortal cap-

tion, tailor-made for our own times: “The

sleep of reason brings forth monsters.”

Art

Shame, cruelty, horror: Illustrating torture

METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK

Francisco Goya (b. 1746)

The custody of a

prisoner does not call

for torture, c. 1815

On view at the Metropolitan

Museum of Art

A series featuring art critic Sebastian

Smee’s favorite works

in permanent collections across the

United States

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