rhetorical analysis of saturn devouring his child
DESCRIPTION
This essay is a deconstruction of the painting Saturn Devouring his Child by Goya, namely its history and its composition.TRANSCRIPT
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Kaitlyn SpanglerRCL 137HRhetorical Analysis Essay
Saturn Devouring His Child
A man is murdered in front of your eyes. Slashed. Butchered. An unsightly slaughter.
Blood coats the ground with a deep, crimson coating. His human body is no longer
recognizable, mutilated by stab wounds. You feel helpless. You feel numb, your feet cemented
in place. What just happened? A wave of trauma and fear seize your consciousness, yet your
face is blank and emotionless. Your eyes remain locked on the gruesome scene. You cannot
look away; you do not want to look away.
Francisco Goya y Lucientes is a predator of sorts. His professional skill and dark artistic
vision prey on the vulnerability of the human mind, an attack of shock and awe. As painter of
Saturn Devouring His Child, 1821, Goya specifically targets what he believes to be the driving
force of human existence: an irresistible attraction to terror and destruction (Gudiol 107).
Through the logos behind the composition of Saturn and his established ethos as an artist of his
time, Goya primarily employs a strong pathetic appeal to make a powerful statement about the
savagery within humans and a cathartic release of his own bestial cynicism.
As a painter, Goya validated his credibility throughout the course of his life and his
variety of artworks, manifesting his own ethos. Beginning at the young age of 14, Goya took
after his father and joined the art world. In 1789, he became a Court painter for the king, King
Charles IV. His classical and realistic style allowed him to become respected in the world of
prestige and wealth. However, in 1792, Goya was contracted with a serious illness, leaving him
totally deaf and marking a turning point in his career: a transformative step into pessimism.
Consequently, this negativity and feelings of impulsive angst from experiences with bloody
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warfare between Spanish citizens and French soldiers amidst the Spanish Inquisition translated
into his retreat to the countryside of Bordeaux, Spain in his Quinta del Sordo (House of a Deaf
Man). It was in this solitude where, beginning in 1821, he painted his collection, The Black
Paintings (Gudoil 124). Distorted faces, an earthy palette, attention to abstract detail, and a
progressively darkening attitude culminate these works into a comprehensive reflection of
Goya’s career from classical court painter to gruesome, dark expressionist (Gudoil 106). Saturn
Devouring His Child is a clear product of his blackened mind, a sparkling example of his
atypical and vehement artistic intentions.
A bearded giant ravenously consumes a doll-sized human, eyes widened with gluttony
and madness. It is a scene of grotesque chaos; it startles its viewer. The mystical story about
Saturn, god of Agriculture, devouring one of his children after Mother Earth warned him that
they would usurp him was not originally interpreted by the cannibalistic mind of Goya. In fact,
Peter Paul Rubens illustrated this scene in 1636, exhibited in Le Torre de le Parade (Tomlinson
245).
*http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons *http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_mbqkfnwiz01qax384o1_1280.jpg
thumb/d/dd/Rubens_saturn.jpg/220px-Rubens_saturn.jpg
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Rubens’ composition (pictured left) is much more classical, exhibiting idealized anatomy
in both the god and the child. The horror of the moment is greatly underplayed through the
subtle grey tones, the symmetrical placement of the figures, and the inability to see either
figure’s expression directly. The pose feels weak, as if tediously planned, and the image is not
overtly abrasive, especially at first glance. Upon further inspection, the scene unravels itself as
disturbing and uncomfortable. Yet, Goya clearly used this image as a reference and adjusted
Rubens’ Baroque style to implement his own logos. Overall, this scene embodies a gloomy
color spectrum, primarily dark blacks, browns, and grays. The pops of crimson red, however, in
the dripping blood of the corpse interrupt this glum attitude with gore and provocation, an
interruption of the theme of fleshy, subdued tones. Through an expressionistic and focused
vision, Goya placed his god askew and off-balance, as if the viewer is stumbles upon this act
from a random and unexpected vantage point. The human form of Saturn is no longer idealized
but, instead, a thin, wrinkly, and aged body. The victim being consumed is no longer a child but
a full-grown man with no time to defend himself, mutilated beyond the point of recognition. The
wide eyes of Goya’s Saturn emanate crazed paranoia and fear; the visual has distorted into an
aggressive confrontation. Although the giant can be understood as an emblem of Goya’s
increasing age and pessimism and the violence could be connected to the political turmoil in
Spain during the Inquisition, Saturn in its entirety cannot simply be reduced to these elementary
concepts (Tomlinson 246-247). There was a certain improvisation required to construct such an
image, a level of creativity and purpose to synthesize the composition, technique, color, and
design into this particular spectacle. Goya has taken a mythical tale with an existing visual
representation and has constructed his own. This process of choosing how to manipulate current
ideals, like the classical style of painting, deciding what should remain or be erased, like the
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straggly beard of the god versus the representation of the child, or even utilizing an appropriate
aesthetic scheme, like the consistently gloomy colors, is where Goya’s individual logic is
validated in his esteem as an artist. His decisions portrayed through this painting grab the viewer
by the hand and welcome them into his own mind, behind each dip of the brush and each swift,
illuminating stroke. Saturn allows its beholder to embrace and interpret the ferocity intimately,
piercing with methodological daggers.
With regard to pathos, this painting is not subtle, nor is it meant to be. Instead, it cuts to
the heart of the matter: a direct drive to the complexities and horrors of human fear. By using an
aquatint technique that literally emerges the figure from darkness to light by, the emphasis is
clearly put on the face of the giant. The viewer’s gaze darts into those of Saturn, his rolling eyes
bursting through his scraggly bearded face. Saturn returns the gaze, into the soul, with desire
and terror. Behind this image lies an emotive theme and purpose: to convince the viewer of the
existence of the, as Gudoil puts it, “savage eroticism and repulsive senility” hidden behind the
visage of each human being (106). One could get lost in the depths of the eyes bulging toward
us, in which he clearly loses his own identity and control. The brutality he inflicts is addictive to
him, an unstoppable act, like the steady drip of morphine. The helplessness and distress he
expresses with his desperate stare, clenched fists, and voracious hunger suggest that it is not
entirely his fault, that within him, good and evil are not distinct; he is currently and constantly
struggling between the pull of the two forces that consummate in this point of self-destruction
and sabotage. As critic Suzanne Singletary states, “Goya appropriated the trope of the cannibal
as a metaphor for the abstract concept of irrationality, emblematized in these scenes of predation
and bestiality. Using the human form as a vehicle, Goya elaborated a pessimistic view
concerning the likelihood of quelling human destructiveness through societal reform”
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(Singletary). This emotion is found in the ‘aesthetic of the unfinished’ that Goya attempts to
create. With hasty brush strokes, an abstract human form, and absence of clarity or definition,
the audience is meant to feel that nothing is ever completely finished but instead in cyclical
transition. Saturn is devouring his own son, a cycle from life-giver to life-taker. Jay Scott
Morgan describes it as a “perverse communion” in which at its most basic concept, a man is
consuming his own flesh and blood (Morgan). This unexplainable irrationality combined with
the sketchiness of the figures sums up this aesthetic appeal. It reflects the chaotic turbulence of
the everyday human experience and translates the experiences between death, lust, greed,
violence, and power into one static, cumulative image.
The audience of this painting, however, plays a key role in the importance and message
of Goya’s piece. Saturn was a Black Painting, a painting done directly on the wall of Goya’s La
Quinta del Sordo. As a wall mural on the ground floor, it was not meant for the general public.
Unlike his previous court paintings, Saturn was not officially released, but, instead, Goya painted
it for himself alone. It was a source of catharsis and a means of synthesizing his careers’ goals
and influences. No longer was he in need of proving himself to nobility, and he could illustrate
his disconnected sense of reality through experimentation with color and form (Tomlinson 247).
What better place to do this than on a wall of his everyday living space? Thus, these murals
were grandiose in scale, 57.5 by 32.75 to be specific. The viewer inside Goya’s house was
theoretically consumed by the painting, submerged in darkness and forced to experience the
image face to face. The giant figure seemed to emerge from the shadow, a direct influence on
the experience of the audience who not only sees but also feels the painting. During his life,
Goya did not assign any of the Black Paintings names. So, the title relating this image to Saturn
devouring his child was a posthumous addition, in which this painting would have lacked any
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means of narration upon his wall. The viewer is then pushed and prodded into viewing this for
no stated reason, in which Goya ignites the ethos of his skill. With this, he needs no permission
but presents this painting with an absence of justification to those who stumbled upon it. T
Immersing an audience into paranoia and fear for no immediate cause was pioneered by
German entrepreneur, Etienne-Gaspard Roberson, at the Principe Theatre in Madrid. By
showing a film using a “magic lantern” he seemingly produces visual images of phantoms and
fantastical creatures. Before this theatrical invention, people were left to use their imagination
with sources like Gothic literature feeding them dark and brooding images. This magic lantern
provided people with a means to confront and experience contact with the supernatural world.
Seemingly, Goya’s logic was to attempt to recreate this experience. Instead of recreating the
illustration of the myth of Saturn, he rethought the essential theme and motivation of the story.
Saturn embodies unbounded paranoia (Tomlinson 248). His loss of self maintains potential
within all of us, as humans, which is an uncomfortable truth avoided by the everyday conscience.
Yet, what Goya thrusts in the lap of the viewer is that this innate hunger for violence and greed is
bound to consume us all one day; we are all destined for ‘insanity’.
In general, a painting is not allowed the privilege of words or explanation. It is an
illustration of reality through a specific perspective. In Goya’s case, he captured intense emotion
through his purposeful attention to detail and composition. This reflects his distortion of the
Baroque style in Rubens original print, his quirky and offsetting composition, the bold brush
strokes, brooding and gloomy colors, with accents of bright red blood, and his placement of this
painting in his own home. Combining these factors and intentions opens the door for this work
to be continuously analyzed, fought over, confused about, and interpreted. While putting so
much effort into one picture, an artist can only hope that their work continues to remain relevant.
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Goya’s Saturn goes beyond the relevance of the 1820s and still continues to invoke thought and
meaning into those who try to unpack his rhetorical message. It still encourages us to ask the
question: What lies beneath our skin, through our gaze, and into our soul?
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Works Cited
Gudiol, Jose. Goya. Comp. Ediciones Poligrafa. New York: Distributed Art, 2008. Print.
Moffitt, John F. "Painters 'Born Under Saturn:' The Physiological Explanation." Art History. 2nd
ed. Vol. 11. (1988). 195-216. EBSCO. Web. 8 Oct. 2012.
Morgan, Jay Scott. ""The Mystery of Goya's Saturn" by Jay Scott Morgan." New England
Review, n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2012.
<http://cat.middlebury.edu/~nereview/22-3/morgan.html>.
Singletary, Suzanne M. "Dystopia: Goya's Cannibals." Aurora: The Journal Of The History Of
Art 5. (2004): 56-81. Art Full Text (H.W. Wilson). Web. 8 Oct. 2012
Tomlinson, Janis A. Francisco Goya Y Lucientes: 1746 - 1828. London: Phaidon, 1994. Print.
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