Romanticism, goya, and saturn devouring his children assignment

Eerie is it as well that, of all places in the villa, Goya had hung the painting inside the dining room. Unfortunately, the painting had deteriorated for seventy years on the walls of the Deaf Man’s Villa before it had been ordered to be restored via transferral onto canvas for the purpose of preservation, and underwent restoration work. As a result of this, although Saturn Devouring His Children survived far better than several others amongst the Black Paintings, some detail on the painting was lost.

Several different possible meanings had been attributed to the painting, amongst them being our powerlessness against time, youth versus old age, and a metaphor drawn between the child being devoured and the situation of Spain at the time. Goya’s painting might also have been inspired by a painting done in the first half of the seventeenth century by Peter Paul Ruben’s, sporting the same name and depicting the same event in the myth. In Ruben’s version though, Saturn lacks the mad look, with a cold and calculating facial expression in turn occupying his face.