The Bleak Brutality of Saturn by Francisco Goya

Exploration through the use of the internet is something that I thoroughly enjoy doing. In 2020, when the pandemic hit Bangladesh very hard and we were all trying our best to viciously criticize all those who walked around without wearing a mask, I was working from home and trying my best to fill up the hours of the day with what I considered to be productive things. Through the power of the internet, I would spend my free time exploring famous sculptures, paintings, and even technically crafted music. It so happened that one day, while spel unking through the deep and diverse world of paintings pertaining to Greek mythology, I came across an artwork that triggered a very unique and unsettling kind of emotion within me. I felt fear, loathing, and even an irrefutable sensation of being bloated. The intensity of this feeling was something that I had never felt before.

AI-generated watercolor rendition of Goya's painting 'Saturn Devouring His Son'

Perched on the display of my laptop was a photographic scan of a painting that depicted a man with an almost beast-like physique. This individual was semi-crouched on his knees and was biting off an arm from the body of a much smaller man, whose head was seemingly missing. I remember realizing that it was not just the fact that this beast-like individual was essentially eating a man that had triggered such a bleak yet intense emotion within me. It was also not just that the painting was done in a palette of dark browns and grays, creating a sinister and sullen ambiance. No, I felt what I felt because of the eyes of the beast-like individual. They were stark white and round, with raised eyebrows. They depicted a culmination of undeniable hunger, fear, shame, lust, and even psychological insanity through pressure within that individual. What I was looking at, was a painting by Francisco Goya, titled “Saturn Devouring His Son”.

As far as thought-provoking, hellish, or minacious paintings go, this was not the first time that I had seen one. The art world boasts a plethora of works that are forbidding in nature, masterfully done by other painters such as Hieronymous Bosch, Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo Caravaggio, etc. These were artists who were able to capture the darker side of the concept of life and the human experience from a varied and sometimes deconstructed perspective.

Without placing a mammoth emphasis on the comparison of work between artists, Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son”, was still very different to me. The terrifying painting, through harsh and almost dry brush strokes, depicts Saturn's enormous form emerging from the shadows. His black mouth is biting on the left arm of his adult son. His bulging and maddening eyes protrude from his face. His large fingers are gripping and digging ferociously into the back of the lifeless body of his son, whose head and right arm have already been eaten. In the entire image, the only stark color is the unceremonious presence of red, which represents blood as it covers the top half of the son’s mutilated body.

The concept of this grotesque work of art is based on the Greek myth which states that the Titan Kronos (also known as Saturn to the Romans), practiced the ritualized act of eating his children out of fear of being overthrown, as this was foretold to him in the form of a prophecy by Gaea. Interestingly enough, this concept was previously tackled by Sir Peter Paul Rubens who was a Flemish artist from Belgium. His version of the painting was more socially acceptable and comfortable to look at. In it he employs his Baroque technique of blending colors, to depict Saturn or Kronos as an old man with grey hair, holding on to his staff with his right hand and his infant child in the other. In his painting, Saturn can be seen latching his mouth onto the chest of his infant child and sucking the life force out of its body. The child’s face (as critics say), hosts an expression of pleasure, rather than pain and unlike Goya’s version, there is also a substantial lack of blood in the overall image. Words like beautiful, picturesque, and even graceful come to mind when looking at Rubens’s version.

One can shed a bit of light on the obvious question of why Goya’s painting was so raw and brutal in nature, by looking into the artist himself.

Surprisingly, Francisco Goya was a master romantic painter from Spain and is considered to be one of the most important Spanish artists from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His actual forte and rise to fame were due to the soft-toned pieces that depicted the affluent life of royalty. In contrast, experts and art critics say that Goya’s “Saturn Devouring His Son” and thirteen other paintings are believed to be proof of his own mental degradation from sanity. Art historians mostly credit this to Goya’s experience of having to witness the atrocities done by Napoleon and his armed forces on the Spanish people. I find it important to note that these fourteen paintings were actually murals painted on the walls of Goya’s own home and therefore, is safe to conclude that Goya never intended to exhibit these works of art. In fact, Goya did not even title these fourteen pieces. They were titled by art historians after Goya’s death and the art historians call this collection of fourteen grim and grotesque paintings the “Black Paintings”.

Through this exploration of “Saturn Devouring His Son”, I found a deeper understanding and appreciation of the dark and often disturbing nature of some artworks. Goya's depiction of the mythological tale remains one of the most powerful and haunting images in art history, offering a profound commentary on fear, power, and the human condition.