I don’t consider myself an artist, but I do love creating visual art pieces for my own enjoyment. Prior to this year I focused on more crafty projects like potato stamps or papier-mâché  vases, but this January I learned how to paint so that I could have a largescale, painted version of an Erik Hagen photograph on my bedroom wall. The photo and painting depict two ripe, spotted bananas spooning on a piece of yellow terrazzo with rectangular fluorescent green produce stickers on their sides. I was originally drawn to the playful minimalism and absurdity of Hagen’s image, and every time I look at it up on my wall, I think about the soft, waxy feeling of banana peels, the sickly-sweet smell of overripe bananas and the laborious process of painting every fleck of brown, pink and tan in the terrazzo. Obviously, I am not and don’t pretend to be a historically or contemporarily significant artist by any stretch of the imagination, but my personal experiences of creating and living with the things I’ve made contribute to my interest in the experience and meaning of artists cohabitating with their art in their homes, especially in the context of a painting like Francisco de Goya’s Saturn Devouring his Son (c. 1820-23 CE).

Saturn Devouring his Son is widely considered the most famous of Goya’s fourteen Black Paintings that he originally painted on the walls of “La Quinta del Sordo” (Figure 1) in the outskirts of Madrid, where he lived in relative solitude between 1819 and 1824 — following the Napoleonic Wars, coinciding with Goya falling ill, and before his self-exile to Bordeaux. Goya painted Saturn and six other pieces from The Black Paintings series over the traditional colorful rural murals that had covered the walls on the villa’s first floor, which he would have used as the dining room. There are numerous analyses of Saturn as an allegory for Spain sacrificing its soldiers and civilians to the horrors of war, or as evidence of Goya’s paranoid mind anticipating, rejecting and fearing death. While I agree that Goya’s experiences in the war (as recorded in paintings like The Second of May 1808 and The Third of May 1808, c. 1814 CE) and aspects of his personal history reveal themselves in the Black Paintings, I argue that Goya’s decision to paint Saturn Devouring his Son directly onto the walls of his villa’s dining room is an intentional juxtaposition of subject matter and practical function that signifies his acceptance of mortality and death, rather than avoidance or rejection.

According to traditional interpretations of the Greek myth, the titan Chronos (Saturn in the corresponding Roman tale) had overthrown his own father to assume rule of the earth and is prophesized to fall at the hands of one of his sons in a similar manner. To avoid this fate, he swallows all his newborn children whole as soon as they emerge from his sister-wife Rhea’s body. After Chronos consumes six of her children, Rhea replaces her seventh child with a swaddled stone before handing him to her husband, who promptly swallows it whole. That child, Zeus, grows up and returns to free his siblings from their father’s stomach — either by poisoning him so they’re vomited out whole or by cutting him open — then banishes Chronos before assuming rule over earth with his siblings. The act of consumption in this myth is a very literal illustration of “the great paradox of eating: ‘that to preserve their life and form, living forms necessarily destroy life and form’” (Rozin, 10). Chronos’ fear of death and loss of power necessitates the eating of his own children. On a symbolic level, being consumed by Chronos, the god of time, is also the eventual fate of all humanity.

The moment of Chronos eating his children has been widely depicted throughout various moments in art history, but one of the predecessors to Goya’s version is Saturn Devouring his Son (c. 1636 CE) by Rubens (Figure 2), a Flemish painter known for the richly emotive Baroque style. In Rubens’ Saturn, the titan bites into the center of his infant son’s chest, as though to drink in the child’s life force. Following the direction of Saturn’s gaze, the viewers’ eye is made to focus on his child’s head, thrown back and revealing a gaping mouth and wide eyes framed by cherubic blonde curls. The infant’s curved left arm, pale against his father’s dark robe, pulls the viewer’s gaze back to Saturn’s face and body. The titan is depicted as old but still strong: although he’s supporting himself with a smooth, straight staff, the musculature in his arms and legs is clearly articulated, signaling his physical strength. Planted on his feet and bent over the infant, Saturn’s body fills the composition, creating a sense of enormity and power. In this depiction, Saturn is characterized in a very direct manner to show his power, size and cruelty. His face is cast in shadow with a furrowed brow and elongated nose framed by long grey hair and a well-kempt beard. Although he’s old, he is still clearly in control of his actions.

Figure 2: Rubens, P. (1636 CE). Saturn Devouring his Son [Oil on canvas]. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Figure 1: A rendering of the lower floor of La Quinta del Sordo with “Witches Sabbath,” “Saturn Devouring his Son,” and “Judith and Holofernes” visible. This floor would have been used by Goya as a dining room, and the walls were originally covered with colorful murals of the countryside. Photo credit: www.theartwolf.com

Figure 3: Goya, F. (c. 1820-23 CE). Saturn Devouring his Son [Mixed media and oil paint on plaster]. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain.

Goya’s Saturn, on the other hand, precariously crouches on the ground, as though he had been on all fours moments before. Saturn’s body emerges from the darkness of the background, lit from above with deep shadows cast across his form. His large hands tightly grip his adult son’s limp, bloodied body, shining white against the rest of the composition. Blood flows down from the base of the body’s neck and right shoulder, the head and right arm presumably having already been consumed by his father. The son’s left arm is in Saturn’s mouth and pulls the viewers’ gaze upwards to the titan’s face. The black, gaping mouth is framed by a wild, disheveled mane of gray hair and wide, animalistic eyes staring desperately out of the darkness as though he is no longer in control of his actions or compulsion to eat. For as gruesome of a depiction as it is, Goya’s Saturn feels sympathetic to the titan. Unlike Rubens’ emphasis on the infant’s face, Goya wholly focuses on Saturn’s face, forcing viewers to gaze into his eyes and reckon with the body in his grasp that’s being transformed into meat within his cavernous mouth.

What does it mean to paint this image onto the walls of your dining room? During his time living in La Quinta del Sordo, Goya had retreated from Spanish society in reaction to the change in Spain’s rule — his liberalism putting his life at risk. By nature of their being painted directly onto the walls of his home, none of the Black Paintings were necessarily meant to be seen by the public. So, how does the meaning of Saturn Devouring his Son change in the context of a lived space where food is consumed? On page 27 of Food is Fundamental, Fun, Frightening, and Far-Reaching, Paul Rozin discusses proper table manners as an attempt to mitigate the disgust of others:

The act of eating displays one of our fundamental biological functions. The open mouth is the only opportunity for another to look inside our bodies, and it is not a pleasant sight, the more so when we are chewing a moist mass of food. And yet, far from the privacy of sex and excretion, we are looking directly at the face of those who eat, at table, and opening our mouth to speak, as well. The challenge to being civilized reaches a peak in eating at table, as Kass points out. The challenge is to suppress disgust in others in a situation that is rich with potential disgusting events. Kass points out that table manners show consideration of others, so that they will not be disgusted by our food incorporation, our moist and messy transformation of identifiable forms into a disgusting wad. His "rule" is: "No involuntary participation in someone else's digestion" (p. 152).

By painting Saturn onto the walls of his villa’s dining room, Goya defies proper social expectations in a dark and ironic manner by repeatedly and voluntarily participating in the titan’s digestion. Goya’s animalistic depiction of Saturn actively eating his child with his mouth open shows that, by depicting and embracing disgust, the artist is turning towards mortality and humanity’s animal nature.

Many art critics and historians focus on the painting as evidence of Goya’s unraveling mind and fear of death in old age following a traumatic life. Or they interpret Saturn Devouring his Son along with the other thirteen Black Paintings as biting criticism against the Spanish government and the cruelties of war. However, by situating my analysis of this painting within its original physical context, I argue that painting Saturn onto on his dining room wall is an intentional juxtaposition of visceral disgust with the room’s everyday function to turn towards and embrace his animal nature and, thus, the inevitability of death. 

REFERENCES

Fernández, G. Goya: The Black Paintings. TheArtWolf.com. http://www.theartwolf.com/goya_black_paintings.htm

Goya, F. (c. 1820-23 CE). Saturn Devouring his Son [mixed media on plaster, transferred to canvas]. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bc/Saturn_Devouring_His_Son.jpg

Rozin, P. (1998). Food is Fundamental, Fun, Frightening, and Far-Reaching. Social Research, vol. 66, pp. 9-30, Spring 1999.

Rubens, P. (c. 1636 CE). Saturn Devouring his Son [oil on canvas]. Prado Museum, Madrid, Spain. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/dd/Rubens_saturn.jpg