Picture of the Day

‘Saturn Devouring His Son’ by Francisco Goya

This painting was 1 of 14 oil pieces (known as his Black Paintings) that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his farmhouse outside Madrid between 1819 and 1823.

He was in his 70s at the time and had survived a few serious illnesses (one of which left him deaf in one ear) while grappling with his own mortality. Goya also suffered from depression and trauma from the horrors of war that he had witnessed at the hands of Napoleon and the Spanish monarchy.

Moreover, the Enlightenment era in Spain that Goya had cherished during his childhood and youth had been replaced by an absolute monarchy that rejected the Spanish Constitution of 1812, which was one of the most progressive at the time.

All these factors contributed to Goya’s Black Paintings, which were never meant for public display.

The title, “Saturn Devouring His Son,” was given much later due to it resembling Roman mythology.

However, for all we know, Goya could have just been depicting a larger person eating a smaller person as a way to portray his bleak outlook on the future of humankind.