Chapter II: Part 2

We are without any authentic particulars concerning the next three years of Goya’s life, but the Conde de la Viñaza supposes that with the 15,000 reals which this work brought him, he went to Italy. How he passed his time there cannot be definitely stated, but many interesting surmises have obtained currency. We are assured by Mr. Muther that for Goya ‘the antique had no more existence than the magnificent art of the _cinque-cento_: what attracted him was rather the teeming life of the people. Out of the red robes of the priests, the costumes, gay with colour, of the women of Trastevere, the merry, careless freedom of the Lazzaroni, he created fragments of life, rich with all its varied colour. Muleteers with their jangling cars, religious processions and Carnivale masques,’ to say nothing of much ‘love-making, scuffling and stabbing’--these are imagined to be the influences that directed his genius during his stay in Italy. Paul Lafond (_Goya_), while admitting the legendary element in most of the reported incidents in the life of the painter, repeats the stories of his ascending to the lantern in the dome of St. Peter’s, of his making a tour of Cecilia Melella’s tomb, walking upright on the narrow ledge of the cornice, of his amatory escapade at a convent and its resultant flight from Rome. He also adds that his _genre_ pictures attracted so much attention in Rome that the Russian ambassador, instructed by his sovereign to invite a number of distinguished artists to establish themselves at the Court at St. Petersburg, made Goya a very tempting offer, which he refused. On the other hand, the Conde de la Viñaza declares that ‘he was frequently seen studying the most sublime frescoes in the land, leaning boldly on the decorations of the architraves or on the most dangerous parts of the cornices’; that he secured the necessaries of life by the sale of pictures of the customs of his native land; that he made the acquaintance of Luis David, for whom he formed a deep and lasting attachment; and, finally, that ‘the only recollection he preserved of Italy in his old age was of his having met there the painter of “The Rape of the Sabines.”’

The friendship that existed between Goya and David has called attention to the similarities in the temperament and the aims of the two men, whose work was so widely different. Both used their brushes to glorify the throne and received honours from kings; both sacrificed tradition on the altar of new ideas; and both lacked the tenderness and the faith necessary in the treatment of religious subjects. David was the friend of Robespierre and Saint Just, of Marat and Buonaparte; he painted the ‘Coronation of the Hero of the Pyramids’; he attended the Convention and voted for the death of Louis XVI. Goya was the friend of Godoy and of the ministers of Joseph Buonaparte; he painted the pictures of the Usurper as well as those of the kings that preceded and followed him; and he executed ‘The Disasters of War’ and ‘The Caprices.’ David was ambitious for the aggrandisement of his art, and Goya strove to make it worthy of its civilising mission, but they differed in the means by which they sought to attain their respective ends. David was inspired by the antique, and produced works which possessed the hardness of statuary as well as its clear-cut accuracy of form, while Goya went direct to nature for his inspiration, and his paintings are the reflections of naked reality. The painter of ‘The Death of Socrates’ was imbued with the guiding purpose of making his work dignified, elaborately accurate, and exclusive, while the author of the frescoes of La Florida, drawing inspiration from the customs of the toilers and the dandies alike, held that ‘a picture is finished when its effect is true.’ David represented man endowed with improbable and unattractive virtues, Goya painted man as he was; David idealised the individual form with classic grandeur, and his austere and solemn compositions, though based on observation of nature, were moulded to a fixed external idea; but Goya was as faithful to psychologic truth as to anatomy, and his brush revealed the moral sentiments of mankind and laid bare the passionate and terrible emotions of the human soul.

When Goya returned to Madrid in 1775 Spanish art was directed by Mengs and Tiepolo, by Maëlla and Francesco Bayeu. Mengs, the ‘reasoning artificer,’ who had neglected the world of nature in his servile study of Raphael and the antique, was a painter who theorised much and invented little. According to Richard Cumberland he was an artist incapable of portraying either life or death; a painter whose creations neither terrify nor inspire passion or transport; a timid, conscientious craftsman with an excellent hand for miniature. Yet Mengs, the ‘Spanish David,’ as we are told by José de Madrazo, was regarded by the youth of his time as ‘the regenerator of the antique,’ and from the dictatorial chair of pictorial art, his voice ‘was heard like that of an oracle, not so much by the artistic cohorts of agitated Germany, where he received little attention, as by the peaceful Italo-Spanish pleiades, who applauded with enthusiasm the exhumation of the Hellenic form from among the ruins of Herculaneum and Pompeii, because it was the fashion, and without comprehending the reach of that fortuitous event.’

In the fantastic, beautiful, but slightly handled compositions of Battista Tiepolo we have the reaction against this form of classicism. The Venetian possessed a fertile and brilliant fancy, his execution was free and daring, if at times careless, and, in addition, he had a wide knowledge of the resources of his art. His decorations in the new palace at Madrid were ‘extolled to the skies of a generation that had forgotten Velazquez.’ Tiepolo got his effects rapidly; Mengs was laborious to a fault, but his work was probably a better guide for second-rate painters, themselves poorly equipped in knowledge, than the clearly (though incorrectly) drawn compositions of his Venetian contemporary. As director of the Académia de San Fernando, Mengs suggested several new laws for the government of the students and certain alterations in the methods of study. These were at first adopted, but in carrying them into effect the director seems to have met with opposition and involved himself in quarrels, which ‘did little credit to the wisdom of his fellow-directors, or to his own temper and tact.’ As a result of these dissensions Mengs failed to accomplish all his reforms, but he secured several important changes in the Academy. It was due to his efforts that plaster casts were taken of the statues discovered at Herculaneum. Charles III. dowered the institution with a rich collection of marbles and bronzes which had been presented to his Majesty by Mengs, and he supplemented this gift with a large number of statues and busts from the Museum of Cristina of Sweden, and with pictures from the royal galleries and from the suppressed houses of the Jesuits. The sovereign also formed a library for the Academy, opened a school of perspective (Royal Decree of August 19, 1766), and commissioned the surgeon Augustin Navarro to instruct the students in the science of nature and the human form.

In his efforts on behalf of the Academy, Mengs had the loyal assistance of Francisco Bayeu and Mariano Maëlla. The latter’s pictures are deficient in invention, in vigour of execution, and in variety; indeed his cold pearl-coloured creations have nothing to compensate their feeble and unimpressive handling and colour. Bayeu was gifted with peculiar intelligence and as an artist displayed fertility, capacity in composing a picture, and a skilful touch, but his designs lack vigour and delicacy, and his colour is disagreeable.

When Goya reappeared in Madrid in 1775, Mengs was dictator of art, and Bayeu was the Court painter. Goya’s art owed nothing to contemporary influence or example, but to these two officials he was indebted for employment and for his wife. The young Aragonese knew nothing of the bitterness of long apprenticeship; his rise in the esteem of the art world of Madrid was rapid. This, in a measure, was due to his genius, but his worldly prospects were assisted by his marriage to Josefa Bayeu, the sister of the Court painter, and by the influence of Mengs, which secured for him a commission to execute a series of designs for the tapestries woven at the Fábrica de Tapices de Santa Bárbara. This first series were designed for the decoration of the dining-room and bed-chamber of the Prince of the Asturias in the Palace of El Pardo. Goya delivered the first picture on October 31, 1776; on January 26, 1778, the tenth and last cartoon was delivered.

Between 1776 and 1791 Goya executed the forty-six tapestry cartoons which now hang in the Prado, and he repainted many of his designs on a smaller scale for the Countess of Benavente at the Alameda. As late as 1802 the Santa Bárbara factory wove tapestries from Goya’s pictures, and up to 1832 some of the more favoured designs had been reproduced four times. Isabella II. presented some of these fabrics to King Leopold of Belgium, but the greater number adorn the royal palaces of Madrid, El Pardo, and the Escorial.

The designs for tapestries which Goya composed during this period of over twenty-five years form a large part of the painter’s artistic output. It has been said that these early designs do not exhibit any of the painter’s predominant characteristics, and that they reveal crudeness and uncertainty. It is probable that Goya approached the task, in the first place, with very little knowledge of either the industry or the style of design required from him. Mr. Rothenstein remarks that the models in the Prado are painted ‘in so crude a key, and with so little regard for harmony of colouring, that their merit is apt to escape the attention of many students,’ while the strong reds and yellows Goya employs in them have prompted Mr. Muther to compare them unfavourably with the ‘tender delicate colouring’ of Watteau and Lancret. Certainly Goya’s designs are unequal in merit. It must be remembered, too, that often he had not the good fortune of being reproduced faithfully; while other artists employed by the factory gained much by reproduction, his work almost invariably suffered in the process. The officials at the factory objected to the elaborate and delicate work which Goya submitted, and a beautiful model (‘The Blind Man playing the Guitar’) was returned to him on the ground that it could not be successfully transferred to the threads of the warp. Goya corrected his design by exaggerating all the tints and he accentuated the figures by enclosing them in white outlines. This fact suggests one reason why Goya’s enthusiasm in the employment speedily grew cool.

We learn from the Palace archives that the officials, who were more concerned with the commercial than the artistic side of the manufacture, declared that Goya’s figures were ‘dandies and girls with so much decoration of coifs, ribbons, fal-lals, gauzes, etc., that much time and patience is wasted on them, and the work is unproductive.’ They contrived to remedy this defect by covering his figures with paintings of trees or clouds or anything else that made the tapestry easier and cheaper to produce, and this treatment was not calculated to make Goya more careful in the finish of his designs. It therefore follows of necessity that only occasionally among his later cartoons can one be found to compare with those in the first series, such, for instance, as ‘The Picnic on the Banks of the Manzanares’ and ‘The Dance at San Antonio de la Florida,’ or indeed with any of the earlier designs, which were all remarkable for the vigour and animation of the scenes, the delicacy of colouring (despite an occasional surfeit of sienna and red ochre), the strength and freedom of the drawing, and the genius for natural and effective grouping in the composition of the pictures. Goya would appear in these works to be carried away by his imagination, and he has presented to us a masterly panorama of all that is brightest and most joyous in the national customs--a panorama that pulsates with life, bubbles over with spontaneous merriment, and fascinates with its irresistible gaiety. We seem to hear the bells of the pony chaise and the pleasant jokes of the wenches at the fêtes on the banks of the Manzanares; the farces of Ramón de la Cruz are translated into the language of colour. And the pictures with children--happy, roguish youngsters--reveal not only marvellous skill, but a sympathy with the poetry and charm of childhood that has not been surpassed. Zapater tells us that Goya was often seen surrounded by children in his house by the Manzanares, and his whole-hearted love of childish grace and innocence is manifested in these studies.

Among his later work as a designer of tapestry one of the best examples is ‘The Earthenware Stall,’ which in its delicacy of colouring, its skilful arrangement of transparent draperies, and its brilliant lighting, is comparable with ‘The Village Wedding,’ which Cruzada declares to be the most graceful composition of the whole collection. Here the story is told with supreme humour. The stupid and happy youth in his finest attire walks beside his fresh-coloured bride who is bedecked with finery and ribbons, a priest and the parents and friends of the young couple accompany them, and the village piper marches in front surrounded by a crowd of singing, shouting, dancing children. In beauty of colouring this design is the equal of the handsome, graceful figures in ‘The Water-Girls,’ and in its mirthfulness and realism it is a companion to his illustration of ‘Blind Man’s Buff,’ which overflows with irrepressible merriment. Another notable design which is also the largest that Goya painted, is ‘El Agosto,’ a striking piece of work. ‘On contemplating this picture,’ writes the Conde de la Viñaza--who declares that it entitles Goya to be known as the Theocritus, the Virgil, and the Garcilaso of painting--‘the sun seems to burn and asphyxiate with its fire, the reapers appear to be dazed with wine, and we seem to hear the chirping of a cricket hidden in the sheaves. Of the children crying and playing on the hills of straw, some appear to be the children of Van Dyck, and others the work of the expressive hand that created the weeping Ganymede.’

The forty-six cartoons mentioned in the Prado catalogue--of which thirty-three are reproduced at the end of this volume--are now contained in the Goya Room of the Madrid Gallery. During the reign of Isabella II., Frederico de Madrazo, the director of the Royal Gallery, repeatedly importuned the administrators of the Royal Patrimony to exhume the Goya designs from the cellars of the Tapestry offices to which they had been consigned, and to have them restored and housed in the Royal Museum. This request, however, was not conceded, and it remained for Gregorio Cruzada Villaamil to rescue them from the oblivion into which they had fallen. He succeeded in having the cartoons placed at the disposal of the Escorial Tapestry Museum Commission, and after being restored they were sent to the Prado. Unfortunately the works are difficult to restore and quickly deteriorate; for it was Goya’s practice to sketch his pictures with extraordinary rapidity, to surround the whole with carbon, and then trace his figures with the aid of _aqua rás_. Many of the studies in the Prado are covered with glass in order to preserve from total loss the canvases on which scarcely any oil has been used beyond that contained in the colours.

During these first years of his material prosperity Goya varied his work for the tapestry factory by producing _genre_ paintings and a few portraits. He also began at this time to exercise his extraordinary powers as an engraver. As an exponent of _genre_ he was unsurpassed, as a portraitist he was excelled by Velazquez alone, but his genius is more certainly demonstrated in his _aquafortis_ work than in either his _genre_ studies, his frescoes, or his portraits. ‘Goya was pre-eminently fitted, both by his environment and by his nature,’ writes C. Gasquoine Hartley, ‘to be the exponent of _genre_.’ The truth of this dictum is patent to all who study his canvases of this period. The customs that he depicted were the customs that he loved; the subjects, the people, and the passions represented are always real. He reveals both imagination and invention in the grouping and arrangement of the scenes. The vigour and boldness of his manner is revealed in the success with which he seizes, as with a camera, the fleeting movement--the unfinished smile, the arrested gesture--and seals it upon his canvas. His scenes of carnival and of merry-makings, his representations of bull-fights, and his sidelights on the Inquisition, are living phases of the life which surrounded him and in which he found his pleasure and his inspiration. The spirit of Goya is in all these pictures. His dramatic temperament, his fierce humour, and his imagination found their outlet in the life of the period and expressed itself in these paintings in which that life is immortalised.

In all that he painted Goya never lost sight of, if he did not always attain, his object of securing absolute truth of effect. Whether he is employed on a portrait, a representation of romance or _diablerie_, or a religious fresco, he is true to the principle explained in his own remark that ‘a picture is finished when its effect is true.’ And the truth of ‘his flashes of insight imprisoned in line and paint,’ give his work a sense of modernity which is seen in the pictures of few other artists. M. Paul Lefond declares: ‘More than any other painter of past periods he is made to be understood in our day. Something more and something better than a modern, the Aragon painter still remains a forerunner; he is still almost a contemporary of the generation to come. His manner of translating and interpreting nature is absolutely modern. He renders it as he sees it, with the comprehension of an artist of our time, daring and independent. He is more than a hundred years in advance of his century. His manner of portrait-painting is completely outside all theory of teaching; his fashion of treating frescoes is an extraordinary audacity. He has in his whole existence, without truce or compromise, been pursued by this idea of arriving at the true expression of life.’

It has been claimed for Goya that his genius was arrogantly unsubjective; that he had no master and was contemptuous of all rules. Originality and independence could go no further, and it may be admitted that he was intolerant of outside influence. But the spark of genius must be fanned into flame by the magnetic influence of example, and while Goya studied nature with a passionate and jealous devotion, he glories in the debt he owes to Rembrandt and Velazquez. ‘I have had three masters,’ he wrote to a literary friend, ‘Nature, Velazquez, and Rembrandt.’ Some have tried to recognise in him a disciple of Tiepolo, and his study of the aquafortis engravings of the Venetian may well have suggested his adoption of that so long neglected method of engraving, but as we should expect, he preserved an independent attitude of mind and developed a manner quite different from that of Tiepolo. There is no evidence, in his engravings, of any admiration for Tiepolo’s style, but his admiration of Rembrandt was as sincere as was his devotion to Velazquez. Gautier finds that Goya’s work reminds one of Velazquez and Rembrandt, ‘as a son reminds you of his ancestors, without any servile imitation--or rather, more by certain congeniality of taste than by any formal wish.’ ‘Goya’s love for the old masters,’ says Lafond, ‘is the best proof one can give of his sincerity. He did not think of inventing new processes; conscious that the same language is capable of a variety of expressions, he was content to master the technique of the past and to borrow from it all that best suited his individuality.’ But what he borrowed he moulded and modified to suit his own purposes; translating it into a language which was his own and in the process enlarging it with new and further life.

In 1779 Goya presented to the King his plates after the pictures of Velazquez. This series, which consisted of the portraits of Philip III., Philip IV., Margaret of Austria, Isabella of Bourbon, Prince Baltasar Carlos, the Count-Duke of Olivarez, and other etchings, are faithful though not inspired copies of the master. Goya wrote to Zapater that he had had the honour of being received by his Majesty and family when he submitted the plates for their inspection, and he adds, ‘I could not have wished them to be more pleased than they showed themselves to be on seeing them.’

Herr Valerian von Loga, who has an intimate acquaintance with and profound knowledge of Goya’s etchings and lithographs, has just published in Berlin a series of thirty-two reproductions of the rarest examples of the painter’s work in these media. The explanatory notes which accompany the plates are of great interest both to the student and the collector. This writer assumes that José del Castillo, who worked with Goya for the tapestry factory of Santa Bárbara, urged him to devote some of his restless activity to the etching needle. He holds that in his earlier attempts, and particularly in ‘The Flight into Egypt,’ the technique reminds one of Tiepolo. This etching is the work of an apprentice hand, and while it is not devoid of charm, it runs on bad lines. Goya’s acquaintance with the fundamental rules of etching was so imperfect that, in the first prints of his ‘St. Francisco de Paula,’ the inscription C. A. R. J. appears turned the wrong way. It is the opinion of Herr Valerian von Loga that in almost all the plates executed at this period there is a certain emptiness and unsteadiness of drawing, while the unsuccessful handling of light and shade betrays the work of the beginner, but ‘what is new and original, and above all, characteristic of Goya, is the manner in which the whole is worked out according to the painter’s mode of working. We see the artist taking pains, not to give form to the things themselves, but to their appearance. On this account outlines are omitted and contours left open, and there are no regularly-growing, flowing lines, while parallel and crossing strokes are rare. The dark surfaces are composed of a great number of short, chopped-off strokes; the entire workmanship is nervous and undecided. It is clear here that the ability of the artist was far behind the good-will, and at times too his inspiration was insufficient.’

In his copies of Velazquez Goya appears to have been the first to introduce into Spain Le Prince’s ten-year-old process of aquatinta, a process which in later times he developed to the highest perfection. In 1779 he brought out an etching from one of his own designs for the tapestry factory. His work so pleased the Prince of the Asturias, for whom it was executed, that the painter is credited with an intention of publishing all his Santa Bárbara pictures as etchings. But his growing popularity as a portrait painter now claimed his activities for more remunerative work, and for more than ten years he laid aside the etching needle in favour of the brush.

We learn from a memorial preserved in the Palace Archives that the graciousness of his reception, the success of his tapestry designs, and the admiration that Charles III. had expressed for his two religious studies of ‘Christ Crucified’ and of ‘St. Francis,’ emboldened the artist to proffer himself for the position of Court Painter. This honour was denied, but he was elected a member of the Académia de San Fernando.

On January 24, 1781, Goya left Madrid for Zaragoza to assist in the redecoration of the Church del Pilar under the direction of his brother-in-law, Francisco Bayeu. The dissensions which arose out of this commission between Bayeu and Goya, and between Goya and the Building Committee, were bitter and prolonged. It is not likely that the biographers of Goya, without the facts of the dispute to guide them to a correct conclusion, would display much sympathy with a conventional, mediocre painter like Bayeu, or so nebulous a body as an archbishop’s chapter, and Zapater and Cruzada have revealed their hero in the light of a persecuted, long-suffering martyr. The vanity and envy of Bayeu and the wilful obstinacy of the Building Committee in their support of the older artist they hold to have been at the bottom of the matter. But the Conde de la Viñaza has exhumed the hard facts in the archives of the Pilar Cathedral, and from these it is now clear that the indomitable independence of Goya’s nature and his impetuous intolerance of all restriction have not been taken sufficiently into account by his biographers.

From the documents which Viñaza has brought to light we learn that the frescoes which Bayeu completed in the Pilar Church, in 1776, gave so much satisfaction to the authorities that they agreed to the artist’s terms for painting the round vaults and cupolas of the church. Four years later, when the Building Committee were getting impatient for the work to be put in hand, they granted Bayeu permission to engage his brother Ramon and his brother-in-law Goya to assist in the execution of the designs which he had already prepared. On October 5, 1780, Ramon Bayeu and Goya presented these designs for the vaults. The Committee found that they were ‘inspired by the greatest taste’ and decided to proceed at once with the work. It may be assumed that Francisco Bayeu arrived shortly after to supervise the operations of his assistants, and it was not long before the disagreements between Goya and his brother-in-law commenced. On December 14 Bayeu complained that Goya would not be subject to correction in the manner of his painting, and he asked the Committee that he might be relieved of his responsibility in the direction of the work, in so far as Goya was concerned. We read that ‘the Committee, taking into account that Goya had come to paint, owing in a great measure to the pressure and eulogy of Bayeu in his letters, agreed that the Building Director (Canon Allué) should see Goya and his painting frequently, and mention any defects he might notice and impress upon him how grateful he ought to be for the good offices of D. Francisco Bayeu in engaging him as his assistant.’

Although it is evident that Goya was already in revolt against the supervision which he had accepted as a condition of his employment, the trouble was temporarily overborne. From this we may conclude that the good Allué did not insist too much upon the gratitude which Goya owed to his brother-in-law. By February Goya had completed the painting of the dome, and he then submitted his studies for the four triangles formed by the arches supporting it. It would appear that the public had expressed their dissatisfaction with Goya’s compositions in the dome, and the Committee complained that not only were these new designs marked by similar defects of ‘drapery, colouring, and idea,’ but one of the figures represented came short of the standard of chastity that was required in pictures of this kind. The Committee, ‘fearing to expose themselves to fresh censure and an accusation of negligence and want of care, put this matter, by reason of the confidence he had won from the Committee and from the whole chapter, under the direction and in the hands of D. Francisco Bayeu, hoping that he will take the trouble to see these studies and say whether the observations of the Committee are just in deciding that the triangles be painted in such a way that they may be shown to the public without fear of criticism.’ But when this resolution of the Committee was communicated to Bayeu, he retaliated with a tirade upon his offended dignity, and we find Allué appealing to Goya to ‘see if there be any way of arranging the matter, knowing that the Committee desire harmony, and do not wish to expose their conduct to censure, but desire only that the work be skilful and perfect.’

To this appeal Goya returned what we may describe as a characteristic letter. This epistle has been published in Spain, but no translation has hitherto appeared in England. The letter is as follows:--

MEMORIAL OF GOYA TO THE BUILDING COMMITTEE.

D. Francisco de Goya, Member of the Royal Academy of San Fernando,
respectfully shows: That after having put the works of his
profession before the public, namely, the paintings just unveiled
at the Church of Our Lady of Pilar, his attention had been called
to the opinions he hears expressed, containing a criticism prompted
by a principle other than that of justice, or governed by the
authorised rules of art, which only should form the opinion
regarding the work; and although he cannot believe that ill-meant
prejudice has gained access to your rectitude, or that you could be
led away by impulses little in accord with reason; yet the honour
of a professor is a very delicate thing; opinion is what sustains
him, all his subsistence depends on his reputation, and when that
is obscured by even a light shadow, his fortune is gone; therefore
Nature warns him to take care of it by using all the defences
within his reach, and to omit the least would be to gain a slight
advantage by abandoning the greatest treasure the Creator had
entrusted to him.

These principles, accompanied by a sense of wounded honour, the
expositor hopes his explanation will make evident to your
benignity.

D. Francisco Bayeu asked that the work in the domes might be done
by his brother and the expositor, but it was on the understanding
that the latter should do one of the parts by himself, as Bayeu
himself agreed, considering that the degree of an honoured member
of the San Fernando Academy, acquired by the work which had won
great renown for him in Madrid, in addition to the work for H.M.,
would not admit of his absolute subordination to another professor
without detriment to his honour. The expositor might be wrong in
this, but his error would have the approbation of D. Francisco
Bayeu himself, who agreed to it, and was a trustworthy witness of
the success that might be expected; and also that of the chief
Presbyter Allué, to whom through some people in the city he had
manifested the same opinion, to which he agreed.

The expositor feeling sure of said promises, with all good faith in
them, proceeded with the Study or Design, and as he wished to be on
good terms with D. Francisco Bayeu he took it to him, and received
his entire approval: he came with him to this city: he began his
work by consulting him regarding the place where the principal
façade should be put; the expositor gave way to Bayeu’s opinion. He
presented the design to you, who approved them; and in executing
them he has only enlarged them.

Taking into consideration these harmonious dealings of the
supplicant with D. Francisco Bayeu, which created no motive for
resentment, and were governed by the principles and rules
prescribed in the first and only conversations regarding the
matter, who could think that the expositor had been wanting in
respect to Bayeu? There are those who think so, because when the
work was well in hand, they wished to make him understand that the
agreement with Bayeu was that he should interfere as much as he
liked with the expositor’s work, and that the latter should obey
him as a subordinate in execution, placing of figures, style,
colouring, and so forth; in a word make him a mere executor and
mercenary subordinate; but as this was in direct opposition to what
had been agreed, it would have been discreditable to his honour to
yield, as he would be losing what his merit had won for him, and he
could not therefore so humiliate himself, for he knew that the
previous offices were sufficient, and that similar ones if
continued would not make them anything but his own production. D.
Francisco Bayeu’s warning to you that he would not be responsible
for his part of the work, only shows that his object was to create
a want of confidence that should cause coercion to be exercised,
which was justly resisted, for doubt as to skill and success sat
ill on D. Francisco, who knew quite well of the honours acquired by
the expositor in Madrid, both from the Royalties and from all who
had seen his productions, all executed by himself without the
slightest direction from any one.

After this, things were artfully circulated against the conduct of
the expositor, concerning his temper, proceedings and dealings with
Bayeu, he being accused of hauteur, pride and stubbornness.
Thereafter malice prepared the blow, long premeditated, of first
creating personal disaffection, and then disaffection with his
work; as shown by the reception of his work in the dome of the
Cathedral of Our Lady. The criticism passed by some persons can
only be attributed to this, because all its merit is unobserved and
only the defects suggested by caprice or ignorance are sought.

He has suffered with resignation the insults to his honour, he has
had the patience to see that the same Bayeu who impaired his credit
with insinuating words, and the deceitful complaint that he was
responsible for the success of the work, and that he would have to
give an account of the confidence placed in him, and that the
supplicant was depriving him of this satisfaction because he would
not allow him to correct or alter his productions; on other
occasions defended the expositor, exalting his merit, acknowledging
his skill and the correctness of his painting.

The insinuations of Bayeu have led to the conclusion that the
expositor came to this city as a mere subordinate of his, and that
notwithstanding this absolute dependence, his proud spirit would
not submit to asking for instructions from D. Francisco, even on
the ground of friendship and relationship. Two entirely false
propositions, which are the cause of all the supplicant’s trouble,
because regarding the first he has already told you about the
agreements that preceded his coming to Zaragoza, and regarding this
and the second, D. Francisco Bayeu cannot deny that, as the result
of those agreements, the expositor executed the studies and designs
in Madrid, showed them to him, received his approval, and no fault
was found. The studies are the complete work, with the same
figures, colouring and arrangement to be observed, and the work
itself an entire copy of them; and if they passed his examination
in Madrid as an act of condescension on the part of the supplicant,
emanating from his desire for peace, why, if as he says he was
responsible, did he not then point out the defects he might have
noted? He did not do so; then what is to be inferred from his
having concealed them, if he noticed them? Obviously, and no
dissimulating artifice can hide this, it may be gathered that his
object was for the expositor to be in error, receive indignant
public censure, and lose all the merit and status won by his work.
But not wishing to believe such malevolence, because other proofs
would be required of it, it must be admitted either that he found
no defects in the studies or designs, and therefore the painting on
the dome, which is the same, has none, or that D. Francisco was
most culpable who, knowing of them, said nothing and allowed them
to be copied.

The expositor has never departed from that friendly subordination,
nor attempted to oppose D. Francisco Bayeu with the proud spirit of
which he is accused; a proof of this is what has been said about
the designs; another, the placing of the principal façade; and,
lastly, the many visits he paid him at his own house, even though
they were not returned. On being informed that the Chapter wished
Bayeu to inspect the work on the dome, he arranged for him to do
so, which he did, accompanied by the chief Presbyter Allué, and in
his presence admitted and acknowledged the perfection of the work,
saying that what he had been informed was not true; he also saw the
designs for the triangles, and approved of them.

In face of all this, the expositor finds that the same bitter
opposition which he had thought would cease, still continued,
because the sense of truth may be suspended but not extinguished,
but seeing that there is no hope of staying the torrent of
provocations that insult his honour and fame, and that an honoured
professor cannot stand for ever against the opposition of his
enemies, whose only object is to work him ill; notwithstanding that
he thought he must finish the work on the triangles, he has at last
been undeceived by the letter which the chief Presbyter Allué had
just sent to him, of which he sends you a complete copy. After the
calumnies he has had to endure, the slights and contempt with which
he is treated will not permit him to continue to expose himself to
some greater misfortune. He now humbly shows, and at the same time
sets forth that he has heard that some figures were to be altered
in the dome, and although the expositor cannot be sure that you
will allow yourselves to be guided by the declamatory voice of the
ignorant public, or the opinion of rivals, the right he has to
defend his honour leads him to forestall you. Before a daub is put
in the Church that will obscure and deprive it of merit, and leave
a permanent witness of the ignorance which is a reproach: which is
now the only thing in the matter that interests him, and regarding
which he appeals to you--because the will of the owner in his own
house does not let go the reins of liberty to such an extent,
merely in order to exercise his authority, as to permit without
cause, and quite uselessly, great detriment to another on a point
so delicate as honour--the expositor thinks the best way to appease
the want of confidence he presumes in others and to assert his own
opinion, is that a person expert in the art, authorised in his
profession, and whose opinion would be impartial, should minutely
inspect the work, and when his criticism detects his unskilfulness
and error, or testifies to his sufficiency and skill, he will watch
with indifference any mutilations executed. Therefore he humbly
begs that you will arrange for the work in the dome to be seen by
one of the members of the San Fernando Academy, one of the most
renowned, as D. Mariano Maëlla or D. Antonio Velazquez, at the
expense of the expositor, and after careful inspection his
declaration be accepted as testimony.--Zaragoza, March 17, 1781.

FRANCISCO DE GOYA.

Upon the receipt of this letter, which may be left to speak for itself, the worthy and sorely tried Allué seems to have invited the mediation of Father Salzedo, who was, perhaps, the only man to whom the irascible Goya might be expected to listen. Salzedo wrote the painter a long, earnest epistle, in which he appealed to his better judgment and prudence, cited instances of humility in the life of Christ for his guidance, and demonstrated the practical advantages that would be derived from doing his work to the satisfaction of the Building Committee. The good father did not hesitate to tell his friend that he had taken up a wrong attitude towards his brother-in-law and the Cathedral authorities, and plainly exhorted him ‘with all generosity and Christian charity, to submit your studies to Bayeu’s opinion, in order to please God by your humility, edify the public, and give pleasure to your friends.’ And he adds in conclusion: ‘My dictum, as your greatest admirer, is that you submit to the demands of the Committee, have your studies taken to your brother’s house, and say to him in the best manner possible: This is required by the Chapter--here they are; examine them to your satisfaction, and put your opinion in writing, doing this as God and your conscience shall dictate, etc. And then await the result.’

The foregoing letter was dated March 30, 1781. On April 6, Goya wrote a conciliatory note to Allué, promising to make fresh studies in consultation with Bayeu. Eleven days later the Committee approved the new designs and expressed their pleasure at finding him reconciled to his brother-in-law. But the truce, for such one supposes it to have been, did not last. From a minute in the report of the Building Committee’s proceedings on May 28, it is recorded that Goya, in a ‘not very courteous’ manner, had told Allué that he was only losing his reputation in Zaragoza and desired permission to return to Madrid as soon as possible: ‘The Committee resenting this further affront, resolved: First, that the Professor be paid for his painting. Second, that under no circumstances would he be permitted to continue to paint any more in this Church, but that this need not deter the Director from giving some medals to his wife, in virtue of her being the sister of D. Francisco Bayeu, who was so worthy of this and other considerations from the Committee, by reason of his skilful work in this church.’

The source of the trouble was the failure of the Committee to accept Goya at his own estimate, which was certainly the true one, as the superior of Bayeu. The young painter doubtless did his best to follow the advice of Father Salzedo, but he wore the robes of humility with a bad grace, and was impatient of ignorant and pedantic criticism. His position had become untenable. The painter received his payment, his wife accepted her medals, and they left Zaragoza for Madrid in June 1781.

Goya was indulging no empty boast when he intimated, in his memorial to the Building Committee, that his renown in Madrid was widely acknowledged. He was no sooner back in the capital than the Conde de Florida Blanca sent him a royal order to paint one of the pictures for the Church of San Francisco el Grande. The favoured minister also presented him to the Infante don Luis, the brother of the King and husband of Maria Teresa Vallabriga, who at once conceived a great liking for the painter. He spent a month at the palace of Arenas de San Pedro, and was entertained with great hospitality, while he executed portraits of the Infante’s family. He also painted for the Consejo de las Ordenes several devotional pictures for the Calatrava College at the Salamanca University. In his leisure hours he worked at his picture in the Church of St. Francis. This work was not completed until November 1784. The pictures were ceremoniously unveiled on the 8th of December, in the presence of the King and his court. The occasion was a triumph for Goya. Other pictures had been painted by Bayeu, Mariano Maëlla, Gregorio Farro, Antonio Velazquez, Joseph del Castillo, and Andres Calleja. But their work was eclipsed by the composition in which the magic brush of the Aragonese represented San Bernardino de Siena. The saint is shown with a crucifix in his hand, standing on a rock, preaching, by the light of a brilliant star, to the wonder-filled King Alfonso of Aragon and his court.

Great was the admiration which this picture won for the artist, but, as was usual in Spain, he experienced much difficulty in obtaining payment for his work. In April 1785 we find Goya, Farro, and Castillo memorialising the Conde de Florida Blanca for pecuniary acknowledgment of their labours, explaining that they had each spent two years in making sketches and studies and in the execution of their several pictures, and pointing out that they are obliged to gain their livelihood with their work and ‘have no income or assistance, like others who have the good fortune to serve his Majesty.’ This memorial was despatched with a covering letter from Antonio Ponz, who emphasises the fact that the painters are in need, and hopes that their request will be complied with, ‘in order that these poor men may not lose heart and that reward shall hearten them to fresh work.’ Three months late Florida Blanca arranged with the general directors at the post-office to hand the artists ‘six thousand reals for the present until something else is arranged.’ This payment is duly noted on the memorial, and a later marginal order, presumably in the Count’s handwriting, reads: ‘Pay another 4000 reals to each, although the pictures are nothing wonderful, but theirs are the best.’ This grudging eulogy was in striking contrast with the enthusiastic praise bestowed upon Goya’s pictures for the Salamanca College by the Consejo de las Ordenes, who instructed Jove-Llanos to assure the artist that he was ‘singularly satisfied with the care and diligence with which he had finished the paintings and with their eminent merit.’

In the year of his return to Madrid Goya’s father died, and the painter sent for his mother and his brother Camilo to join him. He obtained for Camilo a chaplainship at Chinchón, but his mother soon wearied of the unaccustomed noise and bustle of the city and retired to Zaragoza, where she lived on a pension of five reals per diem provided by Goya. The artist at this time may have found some difficulty in providing for his household; for his family, if not long-lived, was numerous, but it is unlikely that he ever felt the pinch of poverty. We can well believe that he was insistent in obtaining the reward of his labours, especially when he was working for princes who, in his view, were living a life of gilded pauperism, and the stress which Ponz lays upon the needs of these ‘poor men’ is far removed from the attitude assumed by Goya. In the letter, in which he applies for payment, he does not plead for a dole in relief of his poverty, but demands the remuneration which is justly due to him. This is the only recorded instance of his being in financial straits. From this time his career is one of eventful and interrupted but assured success. Fame and fortune attended him on either hand. In 1785 Andreas Calleja died, and Goya succeeded him as deputy director of the Academy of San Fernando, with an annual salary of twenty-five doubloons. Four years later, on the death of Cornelio van der Goten, Charles IV., who had just succeeded his father Charles III., appointed him a Painter of the Chamber, with a salary of 15,000 reals, which was increased in 1799 to 50,000 reals a year, with the rank of first painter to the King.

In this period of his greatest prosperity, Goya was courted not only for the sake of his art, but also for his personal qualities. He was popular with men, while women eagerly contended for his favour. A revolutionary, he became the friend of the King, while the Queen and the Countess of Benavente delighted in his companionship. He went from palace to palace and from fête to fête, observing, working, studying, revelling in the life by which he was surrounded and in which he played a full part. This lover of freedom could breathe in an atmosphere of corruption; this son of the soil could play the courtier with a will. ‘If we are to understand his genius rightly,’ says C. Gasquoine Hartley, in _A Record of Spanish Painting_, ‘all contradictions are solved when we realise that he was an onlooker at, rather than an operator in, many incidents of his life.’ This half-hearted attempt to condone the irregularity of his life at this period is at variance both with what we know of Goya’s temperament and with the facts. He was an actor as well as an interpreter of the scenes which he represents, and many of his pictures, which are regarded as biting satires of the follies and vice of his age, are quite as plausibly explained as the expression of personal animus and party feeling. Certain people have discovered in Goya a moralist after the style of Hogarth, using his brush in the sacred cause of morality, to expose the vices of his time, laying bare the baseness of his contemporaries in order to inspire contempt and horror of their conduct, stigmatising the habits of the court of Charles IV., and castigating the hypocrisy, ignorance, and immodesty of the men and women who surrounded the royal family. But while in the later works of his mature age he employed his brush and needle to this purpose, it is more probable, as Lafond concludes, that under Charles IV. and Maria Luisa, Goya drew and engraved, as La Fontaine wrote his fables: for the pleasure of producing them, from the necessity of multiplying them, not troubling himself about questions of morality or of the lessons which his pictures should teach. ‘The truth is,’ says his French biographer, ‘that, mixed up in the intrigues of the Court and involved in personal quarrels, he takes the part now of one, now of another, using his pen to scratch his adversaries of to-day who are his allies to-morrow.’ In all his works he imbued the subject with the quality of his thought as well as with the charm of his colour and the skill of his draughtmanship. Of all the artists of his class, says the _Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones_, none put into their studies more meaning and personal opinion. If he painted a scene he attached to it a proverb or a significant ejaculation; if he produced a portrait he left upon the likeness his opinion of his model; if in many cases it amounted to a positive caricature, he could no more help seeing his subject in that guise than his subject could avoid so appearing to the artist.

With regard to Goya’s personal life at this period it is not necessary to say much, but it would seem to have been consistent with our knowledge of him and of his surroundings. Lafond reminds us that his wife bore him twenty children and continued to love him in spite of his endless infidelities. Mr. Rotherstein declares that while it would be idle to pretend that he was faithful to his wife, it is undeniable that he was deeply attached to her during her lifetime. With the single exception of his devotion to the unfortunate Duchess of Alba, says the same writer, his intrigues seem to have been as much caprices on the part of his sitters as his own. But these caprices were, as it has been said, endless. ‘We have only to look at the master’s self-portrait,’ writes Richard Muther, ‘at this man with the bull-neck and full, sensual lips, to understand that the countless stories which got about on the subject of his relations with the women of high society in Madrid were not all inventions of the fancy. Goya must have been a terror to all their husbands. In all the most aristocratic salons the women were at his feet; and perhaps they appreciated the difference between this sturdy man of the people and their decadent lords and masters. In a word, Goya at this time not only painted Rococo, but lived himself to its full the wild passionate life of that Rococo period.’ And again, in the _Boletin de la Sociedad Española de Excursiones_, we get the shrewd and common-sense conclusion that ‘Goya was a man of his age. He neither aspired to the category of an ascetic nor opposed the customs and tendencies of his time, and his age being one of transition, without fixed principles, he accommodated himself to its duties and its weaknesses, never for a moment failing in his domestic obligations, yet not refusing those outside favours that presented themselves to him.’