Featured White Papers
Content provided in partnership with
The expressive body in Goya's Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 1998 by Andrew Schulz
Following his modest success with the canvas for S. Francisco el Grande, Goya obtained a number of important religious commissions. Perhaps most significant among these was the royal commission he received in 1787 to execute three canvases for the side altars of the convent of S. Ana in Valladolid.(56) For this project, Goya utilized a more strictly classicizing artistic mode that has none of the specificity of detail found in the depiction of Saint Bernardine. Among the S. Ana paintings, The Death of Saint Joseph [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 8 OMITTED] is crucial for our understanding of the development of the Valencia deathbed scene, perhaps begun in the same year. Its precisely structured composition portrays Christ and Mary making restrained gestures of grief at the instant of Joseph's death, which his gracefully clasped hands and heavy eyelids indicate to be a moment of peaceful surrender to his fate. The carefully painted, heavily draped figures have a generalized quality reflective of the principle of selective imitation, which was championed in the oration delivered at the prize-giving ceremony of the Royal Academy of S. Fernando held on July 14, 1787, a couple of months before the dedication of the convent. In that address, the duke of Almodovar invoked the "immortal Mengs" in stating that the goal of the aspiring artists must be "the perfect imitation of the most carefully chosen nature. . . ."(57)
Compositionally, however, The Death of Saint Joseph has a pared-down, geometric quality that is more austere than Mengs's approach. Mary's tilted pose and the broad swath of divine light (an expansion of that which falls on Saint Bernardine) create intersecting diagonals that are balanced by the right angle formed by Christ and Joseph. The result is an emphasis on order and decorum, in both execution and mood, that echoes the classically inspired austerity of the building, which had been designed by court architect Francisco Sabatini.(58) In a letter to Martin Zapater, Goya captures the tenor of the painting by alluding to the "architectonic style [estilo arquitectonico]," which he notes is in fashion at the moment.(59)
Although The Appearance of Saint Francis by Michel-Ange Houasse (1722) has been proposed as a source for the composition of Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent,(60) a preliminary drawing [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 9 OMITTED] suggests Goya may have used The Death of Saint Joseph as a point of departure for the Valencia painting. The basic compositional structure of the drawing appears to derive from the relation between Christ and Joseph; however, the upper body and head of the dying man are turned slightly toward the viewer. These subtle changes have significant ramifications for the observer's relation to the image, as they break down the "fourth wall" and force the viewer into dialogue with the depicted figure. An even more direct engagement with the viewer had been present in an oil study for The Death of St. Joseph [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 10 OMITTED], in which a foreshortened deathbed projects into the observer's space and the anguished expression of the saint becomes the composition's focal point. The emotionalism in the oil sketch for S. Ana is heightened by the emphasis on the relationship between father and son, enacted through their reciprocal gazes and Christ's embracing gesture. Another important similarity between this sketch and the preliminary drawing for the Valencia Cathedral work is the presence of supernatural figures, who were replaced by the shaft of divine light in the final version of The Death of Saint Joseph. In the drawing of Saint Francis Borgia and the dying man, several loosely outlined beings occupy the upper half of the image; the one on the right, who seems to have horns, might represent a fleeing demon who has been exorcized. In spite of these common elements, the crucial difference between these two images is the exposure of the dying man's body in the sketch for the Borgia painting.
