Rhetorical Analysis of Saturn Devouring his Child.

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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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