The expressive body in Goya's Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent

Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent [ILLUSTRATION FOR FIGURE 1 OMITTED], painted through Francisco Goya (1746-1828) in 1788 is single of the most astonishing works in an oeuvre exuberant with remarkable images. In the decade and a half since its inclusion in Robert Rosenblum's view of nineteenth-century art, this canvas has become widely known among scholars and their learners Rosenblum, following a line of interpretation that dates back to the middle of the nineteenth hundred uses this painting to support a symptomatic reading of Goya's art, which he describes as "the greatest in quantity sharply accurate mirror of the collapse of the great religious and monarchic traditions of the West."(1) Goya scholars also have watched to view the work as marking a significant turning point, albeit within a more circumscribed frame of respect for it is in this picture that the fantastic makes its initial appearance in the artist's work.(2) Absent from the couple of these interpretive models is any suggestion of in what manner the painting might have been understood at the time of its creation.

As is belonging to all with Goya's art, there is little in the way of documentary evidence around which to raise a context. The one known document is an invoice dated October 16 1788 in which the artist askings payment from the duke and duchess of Osuna for "two pictures that he has painted, representing passages in the life of Saint Francis Borgia for the fresh chapel that has been builded at your expense in the Cathedral of Valencia."(3) The paintings were intended for the side walls of a chapel honoring the sixteenth-century saint, who had serv as third father general of the Society of Jesus and was a famous ancestor of the duchess of Osuna. The Osunas were among the artist's greatest in quantity important patrons over the nearest fifteen years, commissioning a wide range of works, beginning with a pair of portraits of the duke and duchess in 1785 (G-W 219220)(4) In 1787 Goya delivered a series of seven pictures depicting "rural themes" for their geographical division house on the outskirts of Madrid (G-W 248-54) The following year he painted a large-scale family portrait (G-W 278) and undertook the paintings depicting Saint Francis Borgia, after whom the Osuna heir had been named. In the late 1790 the Osunas commissioned a cluster of small-scale scenes of witchcraft for their region house (G-W 659-64), and they purchased four locates of the Caprichos in January 1799 Around that time, Goya again painted the duke's portrait (G-W 674) and in 1805 he execut a stunning portrait of their daughter, the marchioness of Santa Cruz make straighted in Empire fashion (G-W 828)

Although nothing is known of the limits of the Borgia chapel commission, the works through Goya would have been intended to full number the main altarpiece, painted by dint of one of his artistic rivals, Mariano Salvador Maella (1739-1819)(5) Dedicated upon October 10, 1788, Maella's canvas (in situ and in poor condition) portrays The Conversion of Francis Borgia, Duke of Gandia, an incident that occurred when he saw the decayed corpse of the Empres Isabella, wife of Charles V at her burial and abruptly realized the transitory nature of earthly pleasures. Goya's picture for the left wall of the chapel, entitled Saint Francis Borgia Taking Leave of His Family (G-W 240) narrates the be the effect of the religious awakening depicted in Maella's altarpiece. The duke having been widowed in middle age, bids farewell to his relatives as he departs to join the Jesuit order on the maturity of his oldest son. The work is anecdotal and sentimental in character, with Francis and his heir embracing upon the steps of the family palace at Gandia while other members of the family and household direct the eye on.(6) The emotional reactions of the assembled figures, enacted [i]or[/i] part of to the other individualized physiognomies, lend the canvas an air of pathos, while the richly painted brocades and draperies bring to mind the rich surfaces of Giambattista Tiepolo, who had worked in Spain as first court painter to Carlos III from 1762 until the former's death in 1770(7)

In contrast to this style of dress piece, Saint Francis Borgia at the Deathbed of an Impenitent, execut for the right wall, not aways the viewer with a in deed amazing mystical drama. The saint is aligned in a simple priest's robe, his head encircled by dint of a ring of divine light that echoe the form of the window behind him. Holding a crucifix in individual hand, the other raised in a gesturing of astonishment, he stares spellbound toward the figure laid on the outside before him. The dying man's agonies are inscribed unmistakably and with striking frankness in his naked body: the rigid limbs, heaving chest, sunken organ of visions slightly open mouth, and grasping hand all propose his suffering, and these torments are underscored by means of the agitated sheets that partially conceal his muscle and fat In addition to the sum of two units protagonists, four demonic creatures flutter in a cluster behind the sinner, their infernal origin indicated by the agency of the flames surrounding them. Frank Heckes has pointed without that the subject depicted here is not an exorcism, as had been assumed previously, on the contrary rather a damnation that is narrated in vivid detail in an eighteenth-century account of the saint's life written by the agency of Cardinal Alvaro Cienfuego and entitled La heroica vida, virtudes, y milagros del grande s Francisco de Borja. The body which Goya's painting closely matches, describes in what way the carved image of the crucified Christ held by dint of Francis, having realized that the mind of a particular dying man could not be saved,