Look at the whole reproduction
A pair of wide eyes, white around dark centres, emerges from the darkness. Beneath them, an open mouth meets a smaller body held between two hands; no head is visible. The red areas around that body interrupt the surrounding browns and blacks. Before trying to explain the scene, look at the distance between the eyes and the hands, then return to the whole reproduction.
The Prado titles this painting Saturn. [1] Hughes’s book uses the longer title Saturn Devouring His Son. [4] The subject comes from the Roman myth of Saturn, who devoured his children to prevent them from taking his throne. [5] Goya’s painting began on a wall, rather than on the canvas now recorded as its support. [1] The Prado dates it to 1820 to 1823 and records the technique as mixed method and the support as mural transferred to canvas. [1] It measures 143.5 cm high by 81.4 cm wide. [1]
When looking at a reproduction, begin with the whole composition. The hands and face occupy the upper portion; below them, the larger figure’s bent legs extend into the dark surrounding area. A detail can help you examine the hands, but it removes the relationship between the small body and the larger figure holding it.
The smaller body’s legs hang close together down the centre. The larger figure’s bent limbs spread towards both sides: an angular bend projects to the left, while a pale rounded form appears near the lower right. Compare the narrow hanging body with the broader crouched figure holding it. Dark space separates the limbs, leaving no clear setting around them.
Compare the grey hair with the darker area around the open mouth. The wide eyes, white around dark centres, sit above that opening.
A pale area of the smaller body sits above and between the hands. Compare it with the dark paint around the fingers.
Return to the whole reproduction to compare these small areas with the dark space around both figures.
A painting in a house
Saturn belonged to the paintings in Goya’s Quinta del Sordo that are now called the Black Paintings. [1] [4] The Prado says it occupied the wall across from Leocadia Zorrilla on the ground floor of the Quinta del Sordo. [1] The museum connects the freedom of these works with the private setting in which Goya painted them. [1]
From wall to canvas
Baron d’Erlanger acquired the Quinta in 1873 and had its paintings transferred to canvas. [1] The Prado reports substantial paint losses for the transferred Black Paintings as a group. [1] Its catalogue records an entry date of 1881 and says the paintings have been on view at the museum since 1889. [1]
Hughes dates the start of the Black Paintings’ transfer to canvas to 1874. He records that the remounted paintings were exhibited at the Paris Exposition Universelle in 1878 and returned to Spain in 1881 as a gift to the Prado. [4]
The Prado’s conservation webpage describes strappo as a method for detaching a wall painting from its original support and transferring it to canvas, introducing an explanation by paintings conservator María López Villarejo. [2]
Hughes reports traces of an earlier dancing figure with one foot raised beneath Saturn. [4] This account concerns an earlier painted layer; the figure cannot be identified from the reproduction shown here.
Hughes argues that early photographs suggest Saturn had a partly erect penis before restoration, and that the restorer Martín Cubells later toned down this feature. [4]
What might Saturn mean?
The Prado suggests that the god could personify the fear of losing power. [1]
Robert Hughes argues that Saturn suggests a society in which the old see the new as a deadly threat. He suggests connections with the values of Fernando VII and his supporters, and with “a revolution that ended by eating its children”. He also reads “uncontrollable appetite and overwhelming shame” in the figure, linking this reading to addiction. [4]
Read those interpretations beside the image. Look at how firmly the hands hold the smaller body and how much of the larger figure disappears into darkness. Then consider what the interpretations explain, and what remains outside them.
Hughes regards the smaller body’s proportions as adult and says its gender cannot be determined, contrasting it with the infant in Rubens’s treatment of the subject. [4]
The other Saturn in the Prado
Rubens’s Saturn devouring a Son is a separate painting in the same museum. The Prado dates it to 1636 to 1638, identifies it as oil on canvas, and records dimensions of 182.5 by 87 cm. [3] Its inventory number is P001678; Goya’s is P000763. [3] [1]
The Rubens catalogue describes Saturn holding a scythe while a boy struggles to escape. [3] It describes the boy directing his gaze toward the viewer while Saturn bites into him. [3] It places the painting within the decoration made for Philip IV’s hunting lodge, the Torre de la Parada. [3]
Rubens’s work belonged to a royal hunting-lodge scheme; Goya’s was painted on a wall in the Quinta del Sordo. [3] [1]
Hughes considers a painting by Rubens of the same theme the origin of Goya’s idea, while distinguishing the proportions of their victims: he describes Rubens’s as an infant and Goya’s as an adult body whose gender cannot be decided. [4]
Keep the two museum records separate when searching for the work. A similar title does not establish the same artist, date or painting. The inventory numbers provide a precise way to distinguish them.