Why Did Goya Paint Saturn Devouring His Son? The Story Behind His Darkest Picture

Nobody knows exactly why Goya painted Saturn Devouring His Son, because he painted it for himself, directly on a wall of his own house, never intended it for the public, and left no title or notes about it. It is one of the fourteen so-called Black Paintings he made there some time between 1820 and 1823, and its meaning is still disputed. The traditional reading is a Greek myth: the Titan Cronus, whom the Romans called Saturn, eats his own children because a prophecy warned that one of them would overthrow him. But many scholars think Goya was painting something closer to home.

The House of the Deaf Man

In 1819 Goya bought a two-storey house on the banks of the Manzanares river near Madrid, known as the Quinta del Sordo, the "Villa of the Deaf Man". It was named after a previous owner who had been deaf, but the name fitted Goya too: a fever in 1792 had left him deaf. Between 1819 and 1823, when he left for Bordeaux, he covered the walls with fourteen paintings.

He first decorated the rooms with more cheerful images, but over time he painted over them with the haunting pictures now called the Black Paintings. They were made without any commission and for private viewing, and they have been read as a reflection of the artist's state of mind late in a life that had witnessed the violence of war and the terror of the Spanish Inquisition.

Here is the detail that unsettles visitors most: Saturn was one of six works Goya painted in the dining room. He ate his meals in front of it.

What does the painting show?

A huge figure looms out of the darkness, feasting on a human body. The victim's head and part of the left arm are already gone, and the giant is about to take another bite from the arm. His mouth gapes and his eyes bulge. Almost the only brightness in the picture comes from the pale flesh and red blood of the body and the white knuckles of the giant as his fingers dig into its back.

The myth itself is less bloody than Goya's version. In the story, Saturn swallowed each child whole as soon as it was born: Vesta, Ceres, Juno, Pluto and Neptune. His wife Ops hid the sixth child, Jupiter, on Crete and gave Saturn a stone wrapped in baby clothes instead. Later Saturn vomited up the swallowed children alive, and Jupiter eventually overthrew him, just as the prophecy had said. Goya's giant is not swallowing anyone. He is tearing a body apart.

What does it mean?

Because Goya left no explanation, people have offered many readings: the conflict between youth and old age; time as the devourer of all things; the wrath of God; and an allegory of Spain, a fatherland that consumed its own children in wars and revolution. Others link it to Goya's private life, including his relationship with his son Javier, the only one of his six children to survive to adulthood, or with his housekeeper and possible partner, Leocadia Zorrilla.

Even the basic facts are uncertain. The sex of the body being eaten cannot be determined with certainty. The Goya scholar Fred Licht has warned that the traditional title may be misleading: the usual symbols of Saturn, such as a scythe or an hourglass, are missing, and the smaller body does not look like a baby. Like the other Black Paintings, he says, the title should be taken with a grain of salt. The names of all these works were given by other people after Goya's death.

Goya versus Rubens

Goya was not the first artist to paint the subject. The Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens painted his own Saturn, and Goya had probably seen it, though how much it inspired him is unknown. The difference is striking. Rubens's Saturn acts with cold calculation and his victim is clearly in pain; Goya's Saturn acts out of madness, and his victim is already lifeless.

Goya had also drawn the subject before, in a chalk drawing from 1796 to 1797. It shows a figure biting one person's leg while holding another, but without the gore or madness of the later wall painting. Something changed in the twenty-odd years between the drawing and the dining room.

How did a wall painting get to the Prado?

When Goya went into self-imposed exile in France in 1823, he left the house to his grandson Mariano. After several owners, it passed in 1874 to the French Baron Émile d'Erlanger. After fifty years, the murals were badly damaged, so the baron had them transferred from plaster to canvas under the direction of Salvador Martínez Cubells, chief restorer of the Museo del Prado.

The paintings were shown at the 1878 World's Fair in Paris, and d'Erlanger eventually gave them to the Spanish state. Because of their age and the delicate transfer, most needed restoration, and some details may have been lost. Today Saturn Devouring His Son hangs in the Prado in Madrid, where visitors see in a gallery what Goya once saw over dinner.

Learn with Saturn Devouring His Son: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
to eat someone alive	to defeat or criticise someone harshly	The critics ate him alive.
to send shivers down someone's spine	to frighten someone	The painting sends shivers down my spine.
to take something with a grain of salt	not to believe it completely	Take the title with a grain of salt.
a dark side	a hidden, unpleasant part of something	The Black Paintings show Goya's dark side.
food for thought	something worth thinking about	The painting gives us food for thought.

Try this: Write three English sentences about a scary picture or film, using "to send shivers down someone's spine" and "food for thought".