In Saturn Devouring His Son, how is the Background discussed?
In 1819, Goya purchased a house on the banks of Manzanares near Madrid called Quinta del Sordo (Villa of the Deaf Man). It was a two-story house which was named after a previous occupant who had been deaf, although the name was fitting for Goya too, who had been left deaf after contracting a fever in 1792. Between 1819 and 1823, when he left the house to move to Bordeaux, Goya produced a series of 14 paintings using mixed technique on the walls of the house.Although he initially decorated the rooms of the house with more inspiring images, in time he painted over them all with the intensely haunting pictures known today as the Black Paintings. Created without commission for private display, these paintings may reflect the artist's state of mind late in a life that witnessed the violence of war and terror stoked by the Spanish Inquisition.Saturn Devouring His Son was one of six works Goya painted in the dining room. It is important to note that Goya never named the works he produced at Quinta del Sordo; the names were assigned by others after his death. This interpretation of the painting sees it as a reference to the Roman myth (inspired by the original Greek myth), in which Terra (Gaea) foretold that one of the sons of Saturn (Cronus) would overthrow him, just as he had overthrown his father, Caelus (Uranus). To prevent this, Saturn ate his children moments after each was born, eating the gods Vesta (Hestia), Ceres (Demeter), Juno (Hera), Pluto (Hades), and Neptune (Poseidon). His wife Ops (Rhea) eventually hid his sixth child and third son, Jupiter (Zeus), on the island of Crete, deceiving Saturn by offering a stone wrapped in swaddling in his place. Unlike the painting, the myths usually portray Saturn/Kronos swallowing his children, and later vomiting them up alive after swallowing the stone, rather than violently tearing them apart as in the painting. Jupiter eventually supplanted his father just as the prophecy had predicted.
Hera Saturn Quinta del Sordo Ceres Hades Hestia Zeus Poseidon Terra prophecy Vesta Pluto Bordeaux Demeter Madrid Black Paintings Jupiter Cronus Gaea Juno violence of war Spanish Roman myth Greek myth Manzanares Caelus Crete Neptune Rhea Spanish Inquisition left Uranus Ops