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The expressive body in Goya's Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent
Art Bulletin, The, Dec, 1998 by Andrew Schulz
In order to express the passions, the painter needs a reflexive understanding of all of them, of the effects they produce in the body, and of the different modifications of these effects according to the complexion, age, climate, and other individual circumstances of the subject in which they reside (31).
In this passage, the high degree of detail and the emphasis on the entire body differ from the generalized formulas of Le Brun and reflects the importance placed on the study of anatomy as a central component of artistic training in Spain at this time. Anatomy was viewed as one of the auxiliary sciences (together with geometry and perspective) on which artistic education should be founded. Under the influence of Mengs, Felipe de Castro, director of the Royal Academy of S. Fernando, called for the creation of chairs in these disciplines in 1763.(77) The reexamination of artistic training that took place in the academy during the 1790s reaffirmed the pedagogical value of anatomy. The engraver Juan Adan stressed the significance of its study in his report on education, pointing to the need for "a treatise on anatomy with an exact symmetry of the human body."(78) Consideration of the symmetry and proportion of the body was also underscored in the report given by Manuel Salvador Carmona. Moreover, at a special meeting, held in August 1792, vice-protector Bernardo de Iriarte had emphasized the importance of "a suitable number of good drawings of all parts of the human body and of academies or complete bodies."(79)
Before the late 1780s, however, discussions of the painstaking study of the human body were balanced by invocations of classical statuary as a normative standard to guide artists away from the accidents of nature and toward the creation of ideal beauty. To this end, the Madrid Academy owned casts after the most famous antique works, and it should come as no surprise that in 1768 Mengs had been entrusted with the task of obtaining these objects. Eventually, at the suggestion of Pedro de Silva, the academy decided in 1773 to acquire Mengs's own renowned collection of plaster casts.(80) Of course, travel to Italy offered another avenue by which the aspiring artist could acquire a familiarity with classical prototypes. The recent discovery of Goya's notebook recording his experiences in Italy in the early 1770s reveals the importance of the classical in his own artistic formation.(81) But his report on education, delivered together with those of other professors and advisers at a special session of the Madrid academy on October 14, 1792, suggests a change in outlook, for it includes a vehement attack on artists who use antique prototypes as pedagogical tools:
What a scandal to hear nature deprecated in comparison to Greek statues by one who knows neither the one, nor the other, without acknowledging that the smallest part of Nature confounds and amazes those who know most! What statue, or cast of it might there be, that is not copied from Divine Nature? As excellent as the artist may be who copied it, can he not but proclaim that placed at its side, one is the work of God, and the other of our miserable hands? He who wishes to distance himself, to correct [nature] without seeking the best of it, can he help but fall into a reprehensible [and] monotonous manner, of paintings, of plaster models, as has happened to all who have done this exactly?(82)
