Saturn Devouring His Son

One of the fourteen Black Paintings that Goya painted in oil straight onto the plastered walls of his country house (the “Quinta del Sordo”) at the age of 73, deaf and disillusioned after the war and the return of absolutist rule. Saturn, the titan who eats his children for fear of being overthrown, is horror with nothing laid on top of it. The violent brushwork and the deformed figure point towards the 20th century. Transferred to canvas in 1874, now in the Museo del Prado.

A painter between two eras: Goya trained in 18th-century Neoclassicism (court portraits, clear composition), but the Black Paintings take Romantic anguish as far as it will go. He changed period halfway through his career, and this painting is the evidence.