Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes
Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez, Erfinder
"Barbarroja", don Cristóbal de Castan̄eda y Pernía, 1778/79 - 85; vor 1792
In the Gazeta de Madrid for Tuesday, July 28, 1778, Francisco de Goya advertised nine etchings that he had “drawn and etched” after Diego Velázquez's paintings from the Royal Palace in Madrid. These were the five large equestrian royal portraits, the full-figure Aesop and Menippos, and two seated dwarfs, Sebastián de Morra and El Primo.[1] In December of the same year, he followed these with two new pieces: Prince Baltasar Carlos on Horseback and Bacchus (Los Borrachos). In doing so, he virtually directly obeyed the call of Antonio Ponz, made shortly before, in the sixth volume of his Viage de España published in 1776:
“It would be a laudable undertaking to produce prints of these and other excellent works by the great classic foreign and national artists in Spain, which are unknown to the whole world, and accordingly not celebrated to the degree they deserve to be. Europe is only vaguely aware that in Madrid, and especially in the royal palaces and in the Escorial, there are astonishing works; but almost no one has any notion of them, having seen virtually none of them, even in poor prints.”[2]
A few years before Ponz, in 1770, Andrés de la Calleja (1705-1785), a member of the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, had already requested that its best pupils and selected artists “produce engravings of the most important original paintings from the royal collection,” so as to “call the attention of the public, abroad as well, to Spanish art, to hone the technical skill of the artists so engaged, to recover their own production costs through the sale of the prints, as well as to release the country from the monopoly of foreign printers.”[3]
Following the dynastic change in the year 1700, foreign artists again arrived in increasing numbers at the Spanish court. For example, Philip V sent for Louis Michel van Loo and Corrado Giaquinto (1703-1766), and Charles III placed Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770) and Anton Raphael Mengs in leading posts. Marcelino Menéndez Pelayo would even assert that “Spanish art, more precisely, no longer existed at all,”[4] and Hugo Kehrer felt that “Madrid [is] no longer the city of the great Velázquez, the tradition has died out... There is no longer a national style, the French taste of the Bourbon court predominates.”[5]
Goya's endeavors must be seen against such a background. He was still relatively new in Madrid, having worked for the Royal Tapestry Factory of Saint Barbara since the end of 1774, and was clearly searching for opportunities to make his name more familiar at court. His efforts did not go unnoticed: already in the foreword to the eighth volume of his Viage de España, Ponz was able to mention Goya with praise, and emphasize his “skills, his intellect, and his eagerness to serve the country,” since he has “taken on the very praiseworthy task of producing etchings of the most exquisite paintings by Velázquez found in the collection of the Royal Palace.”[6]
The known preliminary drawings for the above-mentioned etchings offered for sale, almost all of which come from the collection of Juan Agustín Ceán Bermúdez,[7] were done in pencil. For some, there are also ink drawings.[8] For all the other known drawings, Goya chose to use red chalk. It is striking, on the one hand, that with these Goya began to experiment with the aquatint technique, which was new to him, and, on the other, that he did not publish any of these additional works.
Without exception, in Goya's renderings, he managed to continue a development begun by Velázquez. Before Velázquez, the portrait was often most of all an image meant to impress, with interchangeable—and interchanged—likenesses. Velázquez introduced a personal element into these frequently stiff portraits, primarily of the ruling classes, with an emphasis on attributes and without particular regard for the subject's actual personality. Of course his portraits took into account the baroque need to impress, but they also depicted the actual personality.
Now Goya resolved this balance between imposing apparatus and personality, and he gave considerably more weight to the human—the personal-focusing on the subject as a human being. The imposing aspect is still there as explanatory padding, but it is in no way merely a formula to be followed.
Goya's etchings were intended to present to the public the “old” paintings it had hardly had an opportunity to see firsthand, and accordingly could not compare the etchings against the originals. The etchings, therefore, gave the impression that the paintings of Velázquez must have been “modern" from the point of view of the eighteenth century.
The present sheet is a preparatory drawing for Goya's etching[9] after the painting by Velázquez at the Museo Nacional del Prado.[10] That etching was not published by Goya himself, but later, by the National Prints Office (Calcografía Nacional) after they had acquired the painter's prints between March 10, 1790, and December 1792. There are, however, some known proofs pulled by Goya himself in black and red ink, while he was still working on it.[11] The paper shows signs of pressure from the plate on the lower half.
The “African character,' as Ceán Bermúdez called him in his Diccionario,[12] is Cristóbal de Castañeda y Pernía, a buffoon from the court of Philip IV, who appears here dressed as Barbarroja. That Ottoman pirate fought against Don Juan of Austria in the battle of Lepanto. Velázquez also painted The Buffoon don Juan of Austria (Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, P 1200), probably as a pendant to this painting, and Goya made a print of it, too (see the corresponding preparatory drawing in this catalogue, inv. no. 38539, cat. no. 51). The inscriptions that appear at the lower left and right are briefer than those normally employed by Goya. They more closely resemble those customarily used to indicate the authorship of reproduction prints: “Velázquez le pinto” and “Goya le dibuxo.”
The contours of Barbarroja's figure are entirely defined, but shifted slightly to the left with regard to the painting, and somewhat closer to the viewer. The background is entirely covered by harmonious hatching. The buffoon's cap is somewhat longer and his eyebrows are more arched, giving him a less friendly appearance than in the painting. With these changes, Goya manages to convey the overall impression of a finished work, just as he does in the corresponding print. The same cannot be said of the painting.
Jens Hoffmann-Samland
1 The whole announcement is reproduced in Wilson-Bareau, Santiago Páez et al. 1996, 130, no. 95.
2 Ponz 1972 (1772-1794), vol. VI, 129ff.: “...sería empresa plausible el grabar esta y otras excelentes obras de tantos autores clásicos extrangeros y nacionales como hay en España, ignoradas de todo el mundo, y por consiguiente mucho menos acreditados de lo que merecen. Sabe Europa muy en confuso, que en Madrid, y señaladamente en los Reales Palacios y en el Escorial, hay obras estupendas; pero pocos tienen idea de lo que son, porque apenas han visto una miserable estampa de alguna de ellas.”
3 Junta Ordinaria September 30, 1770, folio 40v, Madrid, Archivo de la Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Juntas Generales 1770-1775, book III, Document 3/83, cited from Luxenberg 1999, 392.
4 Menéndez Pelayo 1994, 1512: “El arte español propiamente dicho, no existia ya...”
5 Kehrer [1920], 10.
6 “De otra empresa muy laudable se debe hacer mención, y es de la que ha tomado a su cargo D. Francisco Goya, profesor de pintura: este se ha propuesto grabar de agua fuerte los insignes quadros de D. Diego Velazquez, que se encuentran en la colección del Real Palacio; y desde luego ha hecho ver su capacidad, inteligencia, y zelo en servir a la nacion...” See Wilson-Bareau, Santiago Páez et al. 1996, 131.
7 In the manuscript of his Diccionario he noted the works for which he owned the drawings; see Juan Agustin Ceán Bermúdez, manuscript of the Diccionario histórico de los mas ilustres profesores de las bellas artes en España, Madrid, Biblioteca Real, II-4056 (caja) no. 17, v. 1800.
8 For the entire portfolio of Goya's works after Velázquez, see Hoffmann-Samland 2011. In Matilla (dir.) 2000, 25–74, Jesusa Vega discusses the different techniques employed by Goya in these drawings according to their intended use.
9 Harris 1964, no. 12.
10 Ca. 1633, oil on canvas, 77 15/16 x 47 5/8 in. (198 x 121 cm), Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado, P 1199.
11 Hoffmann-Samland 2011, 270.
12 Ceán Bermúdez 1800, 5:178.