At age 73, a sickly Goya purchased a small house by the banks of Manzanares River and produced fourteen oil paintings directly on the walls of his new home. They were called The Black Paintings as each had unsettling subject matter. The most famous of these paintings was Saturn Devouring his Children, depicting a moment from Greco-Roman mythology in which Saturn (or Kronos) eats his offspring to prevent them from eventually usurping his mastery of the universe. Jupiter (or Zeus) escaped this fate of course, but that's for another day. The painting is wonderfully gruesome, particularly in the partially eaten headless body and the wide, almost Muppet-like, eyes of Saturn.
Saturn Devouring his Children is on display in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. Postcards are available in the lobby.
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Well you know ,I don't know much about art, but I know what I like.
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ReplyDeletegahan wilson. thought you two should know.
-lc
It's also known as "Cronos Devours His Young" or "Time Devours It's Young". Recently however art historians have began speculating that it is not Cronos or Saturn, but instead just a big monster.
ReplyDeleteAlso 200 years earlier: http://coromandal.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/rubens_saturn.jpg
ReplyDeleteI'd seen that painting before, and I can't help but feel it's missing something in comparison to Goya's, but I don't know the proper art terms to describe it. The Goya one just grabs me more, I guess. Maybe it's because Saturn/Cronos/Time/the Monster is looking straight at me.
ReplyDeleteThe correct word is "dynamic". That's what I learned at art school. You can say it whenever you want, because it doesn't mean anything, but you sound like yo know what you're talking about.
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